The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 541 pages of information about The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I..

The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 541 pages of information about The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I..

[Sidenote:  Ob. 5.] Furthermore it were to small purpose to make so long, so painefull, so doubtfull a voyage by such a new found way, if in Cathayo you should neither bee suffered to land for silkes and siluer, nor able to fetch the Molucca spices and pearle for piracie in those Seas.  Of a law denying all Aliens to enter into China, and forbidding all the inhabiters vnder a great penaltie to let in any stranger into those countreys, shall you reade in the report of Galeotto Perera there imprisoned with other Portugals:  as also in the Iaponish letters, how for that cause the worthy traueller Xauierus bargained with a Barbarian Merchant for a great summe of pepper to be brought into Canton, a port in China.  The great and dangerous piracie vsed in those Seas no man can be ignorant of, that listeth to reade the Iaponish and East Indian historie.

[Sidenote:  Ob. 6.] Finally, all this great labour would be lost, all these charges spent in vaine, if in the ende our trauellers might not be able to returne againe, and bring safely home into their owne natiue countrey that wealth and riches, which they in forrein regions with aduenture of goods, and danger of their liues haue sought for.  By the Northeast there is no way, the Southeast passage the Portugals doe hold as the Lords of those Seas.  At the Southwest Magellans experience hath partly taught vs, and partly we are persuaded by reason, how the Easterne current striketh so furiously on that straight, and falleth with such force into that narrow gulph, that hardly any ship can returne that way into our West Ocean out of Mar del Zur.  The which if it be true, as truly it is, then wee may say that the aforesayd Easterne current or leuant course of waters continually following after the heauenly motions, loseth not altogether his force, but is doubled rather by an other current from out the Northeast, in the passage betweene America and the North land, whither it is of necessity caryed:  hauing none other way to maintaine it selfe in circular motion, and consequently the force and fury thereof to be no lesse in the straight of Anian, where it striketh South into Mar del Zur, beyond America (if any such straight of Sea there be) then in Magellans fret, both straights being of like bredth:  as in Belognine Zalterius table of new France, and in Don Diego Hermano de Toledo his Card for nauigation in that region we doe finde precisely set downe.

Neuerthelesse to approue that there lyeth a way to Cathayo at the Northwest from out of Europe, we haue experience, namely of three brethren that went that iourney, as Gemma Frisius recordeth, and left a name vnto that straight, whereby now it is called Fretum trium fratrum.  We doe reade againe of a Portugall that passed this straight, of whom Master Frobisher speaketh, that was imprisoned therefore many yeeres in Lisbone, to verifie the olde Spanish prouerbe, I suffer for doing well.  Likewise Andrew Vrdaneta a Fryer of Mexico came out of Mar del Zur this way into Germanie:  his Carde (for he was a great discouerer) made by his owne experience and trauell in that voyage, hath bene seene by Gentlemen of good credite.

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