unto their dominions there, could the eastern current and Levant
winds as easily suffer men to return as speedily therewith they may
be carried thither; for the which difficulty, or rather
impossibility of striving against the force both of wind and stream,
this passage is little or nothing used, although it be very well
known.

The third way, by the north-east, beyond all Europe and Asia, that
worthy and renowned knight Sir Hugh Willoughbie sought to his peril,
enforced there to end his life for cold, congealed and frozen to
death. And, truly, this way consisteth rather in the imagination of
geographers than allowable either in reason, or approved by
experience, as well it may appear by the dangerous trending of the
Scythian Cape set by Ortellius under the 80th degree north, by the
unlikely sailing in that northern sea, always clad with ice and
snow, or at the least continually pestered therewith, if haply it be
at any time dissolved, beside bays and shelves, the water waxing
more shallow towards the east, to say nothing of the foul mists and
dark fogs in the cold clime, of the little power of the sun to clear
the air, of the uncomfortable nights, so near the Pole, five months
long.

A fourth way to go unto these aforesaid happy islands, the Moluccas,
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a learned and valiant knight, discourseth of
at large in his new "Passage to Cathay." The enterprise of itself
being virtuous, the fact must doubtless deserve high praise, and
whensoever it shall be finished the fruits thereof cannot be small;
where virtue is guide, there is fame a follower, and fortune a
companion. But the way is dangerous, the passage doubtful, the
voyage not thoroughly known, and therefore gainsaid by many, after