Now lest you should make small account of ancient writers or of their experiences which travelled long before our times, reckoning their authority amongst fables of no importance, I have for the better assurance of those proofs set down some part of a discourse, written in the Saxon tongue, and translated into English by Master Noel, servant to Master Secretary Cecil, wherein there is described a navigation which one other made, in the time of King Alfred, King of Wessex, Anne 871, the words of which discourse were these: "He sailed right north, having always the desert land on the starboard, and on the larboard the main sea, continuing his course, until he perceived that the coast bowed directly towards the east or else the sea opened into the land he could not tell how far, where he was compelled to stay until he had a western wind or somewhat upon the north, and sailed thence directly east along the coast, so far as he was able in four days, where he was again enforced to tarry until he had a north wind, because the coast there bowed directly towards the south, or at least opened he knew not how far into the land, so that he sailed thence along the coast continually full south, so far as he could travel in the space of five days, where he discovered a mighty river which opened far into the land, and in the entry of this river he turned back again." Whereby it appeareth that he went the very way that we now do yearly trade by S. Nicholas into Muscovia, which way no man in our age knew for certainty to be sea, until it was since discovered by our Englishmen in the time of King Edward I., but thought before that time that Greenland had joined to Normoria Byarmia, and therefore was accounted a new discovery, being nothing so indeed, as by this discourse of Ochther's it appeareth. Nevertheless if any man should have taken this voyage in hand by the encouragement of this only author, he should have been thought but simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years past, in so barbarous a tongue by one only obscure author, and yet we in these our days find by our own experiences his former reports to be true. How much more, then, ought we to believe this passage to Cathay to be, being verified by the opinions of all the best, both antique and modern geographers, and plainly set out in the best and most allowed maps, charts, globes, cosmographical tables, and discourses of this our age and by the rest not denied, but left as a matter doubtful. CHAPTER II. 1. All seas are maintained by the abundance of water, so that the nearer the end any river, bay, or haven is, the shallower it waxeth (although by some accidental bar it is sometime found otherwise), but the farther you sail west from Iceland, towards the place where this strait is thought to be, the more deep are the seas, which giveth us good hope of continuance of the same sea, with Mare del Sur, by some strait that lieth between America, Greenland, and Cathay.