Europe? Suppose that Columbus that noble and high-spinted Genuois escried
vnknowen landes to the Westward of Europe and Africke: Did not the valiant
English knight sir Hugh Willoughby; did not the famous Pilots Stephen
Burrough, Arthur Pet, and Charles Iackman accoast Noua Zembia, Colgoieue,
and Vaigatz to the North of Europe and Asia? Howbeit you will say perhaps,
not with the like golden successe, not with such deductions of Colonies,
nor attaining of conquests. True it is that our successe hath not bene
correspondent vnto theirs: yet in this our attempt the vncertaintie of
finding was farre greater, and the difficultie and danger of searching was
no whit lesse. For hath not Herodotus (a man for his time, most skilfull
and iudicial in Cosmographie, who writ aboue 2000. yeeres ago) in his 4.
booke called Melpomene, signified vnto the Portugales in plaine termes;
that Africa, except the small Isthmus between the Arabian gulfe and the
Mediterran sea, was on all sides enuironed with the Ocean? And for the
further confirmation thereof, doth he not make mention of one Neco an
Agyptian King, who (for trials sake) sent a fleet of Phoenicians downe the
Red sea, who setting forth in Autumne and sailing Southward till they had
the Sunne at noonetide vpon their sterbourd (that is to say hauing crossed
the Aquinoctial and the Southerne tropique) after a long Nauigation
directed their course to the North and in the space of 3. years enuironed
all Africk, passing home through the Gaditan strait and arriuing in Agypt.
And doth not [Footnote: Lib. 2. nat. hist. cap. 67.] Plinie tell them that
noble Hanno in the flourishing time and estate of Carthage sailed from
Gades in Spaine to the coast of Arabia foelix, and put down his whole
iournall in writing? Doth he not make mention that in the time of Augustus
Casar the wracke of certaine Spanish ships was found floating in the
Arabian gulfe? And, not to be ouer tedious in alleaging of testimonies,
doth not Strabo in the 2. booke of his Geography, together with Cornelius
Nepos and Plinie in the place beforenamed, agree all in one, that one
Eudoxus fleeing from King Lathyrus, and sailing downe the Arabian bay,