[Note 13:  The Cordilleras on the Isthmus of Panama.]

The Admiral, who first explored this region, believes these peaks rise to a height of forty miles, and he says that at the base of the mountains there is a road leading to the South Sea.  He compares its position with that of Venice in relation to Genoa, or Janua, as the inhabitants who boast that Janus was their founder, call their city.  The Admiral believes that this continent extends to the west and that the greater part of its lands lies in that direction.  In like manner we observe that the leg forming Italy branches out beyond the Alps into the countries of the Gauls, the Germans, the Pannonians, and ultimately those of the Sarmats and the Scythians extending to the Riphe Mountains and the glacial sea, not to mention Thrace, all Greece, and the countries ending towards the south at Cape Malea and the Hellespont, and north at the Euxine and the Palus Maeotidus.  The Admiral believes that on the left and west, this continent joins on to the India of the Ganges, and that towards the right it extends northwards to the glacial sea and the north pole, lying beyond the lands of the Hyperboreans; the two seas, that is to say the southern and the northern ocean, would thus join one another at the angles of this continent.  I do not believe all its coasts are washed by the ocean, as is our Europe which the Hellespont, the Tanais, the glacial ocean, the Spanish sea and the Atlantic completely surround.  In my opinion the strong ocean currents running towards the west prevent these two seas from being connected, and I suppose, as I have said above, that it does join on to northern lands.

We have spoken enough about longitude, Most Holy Father; let us see what are the theories concerning latitude.

We have already stated that the distance separating the South Sea from the Atlantic Ocean is a very small one; for this fact was demonstrated during the expedition of Vasco Nunez and his companions.  Just as our Alps in Europe, narrow in some places and broaden out over a greater extent in others, so by an analogous arrangement of nature this new continent lengthens in some places, extending to a great distance, and in others it narrows by gulfs which, from the opposite seas, encroach on the land between them.  For example:  at both Uraba and Veragua the distance between the two oceans is trifling, while in the region of the Maragnon River, on the contrary, it is vastly extended.  That is, if the Maragnon is indeed a river and not a sea.  I incline nevertheless to the first hypothesis, because its waters are fresh.  The immense torrents necessary to feed such a stream could certainly not exist in a small space.  The same applies in the case of the river Dobaiba,[14] which flows into the sea at the gulf of Uraba, by an estuary three miles wide and forty-five ells deep; it must be supposed that there is a large country amongst the mountains of Dobaiba from which this river