continent with Lapland and Norway: the like our north-western
travellers have done, declaring by their navigation that way the
ignorance of all cosmographers that either do join Greenland with
America, or continue the West Indies with that frosty region under
the North Pole. As for Virgil, he sang according to the knowledge
of men in his time, as another poet did of the hot zone.

Quarum quae media est, non est habitabilis aestu. Imagining, as
most men then did, Zonam Torridam, the hot zone, to be altogether
dishabited for heat, though presently we know many famous and worthy
kingdoms and cities in that part of the earth, and the island of S.
Thomas near Ethiopia, and the wealthy islands for the which chiefly
all these voyages are taken in hand, to be inhabited even under the
equinoctial line.

To answer the third objection, besides Cabot and all other
travellers' navigations, the only credit of Master Frobisher may
suffice, who lately, through all these islands of ice and mountains
of snow, passed that way, even beyond the gulf that tumbleth down
from the north, and in some places, though he drew one inch thick
ice, as he returning in August did, came home safely again.

The fourth argument is altogether frivolous and vain, for neither is
there any isthmus or strait of land between America and Asia, nor
can these two lands jointly be one continent. The first part of my
answer is manifestly allowed by Homer, whom that excellent
geographer, Strabo, followeth, yielding him in this faculty the
prize. The author of that book likewise On the Universe to
Alexander, attributed unto Aristotle, is of the same opinion that
Homer and Strabo be of, in two or three places. Dionysius, in his