The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 06: Madiera, the Canaries, Ancient Asia, Africa, etc.Hakluyt, Richard
History
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 06: Madiera, the Canaries, Ancient Asia, Africa, etc.
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
driuen into these stiffe regions, that moysture was no more to bee hoped
for that by dissolution it should haue any returne, so that by time the
world should be left waterlesse. And therefore how ridiculous this
imagination of the seas frysing is, I refer to the worlds generall opinion.
That the ayre in colde regions is tollerable.
And now for a full answer of all obiections, if the ayre bee proued
tollerable then this most excellent and commodious passage is without al
contradiction to be perfourmed. And that the ayre is tollerable as well in
the winter as in the Sommer is thus proued. The inhabitantes of Moscouia,
Lapland, Swethland, Norway and Tartaria omit not to trauel for their
commodity: in the deepest of winter, passing by sleades ouer the yse and
congealed snowe being made very slipperie and compact like yse by reason of
much wearing and trading, hauing the vse of a kind of stag by them called
Reen to drawe those their sleades.
Groynland (by me lately named Desolation) is likewise inhabited by a people
of good stature and tractable conditions, it also mayntayneth diuers kinde
of foules and beastes which I haue their seene, but know not their names,
and these must trauell for their food in winter, and therefore the ayre is
not intolerable in the extremest nature of coldnes: and for the quality
thereof in Sommer by my owne experience I knowe that vpon the shore it is
as hot there as it is at the ylls of cape de Verde in which place there is
such aboundance of moskeetes, (a kind of gnat that is in India very
offensiue and in great quantitie) as that we were stong with them like
lepers, not beeing able to haue quiet being vpon the shore.
And vnder the clyfe in the pooles vnto which the streames aryse not, I haue
found salt in great plenty as whyte as the salt of Mayo congeled from the
salt water which the spryng tyds bring into those poles, which could not be
but by the benefit of a noble heat, of which salt I brought with me and
gaue to master Secretory Walsingham and to master Sanderson, as a rare
thing to be found in those parts and farther the same was of an
extraordenary saltnes. And therefore it is an idle dreame that the ayre
should there be insufferable, for ourselues haue with the water of those
seas made salt, because we desired to know whether the benefit of the sunne
were the cause of this cogulation, what better confirmation then can there
be then this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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