THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE ad 



1576. 

 Crantor the Grsecian, and Proclus, and Philo the famous Proclus pag. 

 Jew (as appeareth in his booke De Mundo, and in the 2 4- 

 Commentaries upon Plato) to be overflowen and 

 swallowed up with water, by reason of a mightie earth- 

 quake, and streaming downe of the heavenly Fludgates. 

 The like whereof happened unto some part of Italy, when 

 by the forciblenes of the Sea, called Superum, it cut of}' 

 Sicilia from the Continent of Calabria, as appeareth in 

 Justine, in the beginning of his fourth booke. Also JustineLib.^. 

 there chanced the like in Zetland a part of Flanders. 



And also the Cities of Pyrrha and Antissa, about Plinie. 

 Meotis palus : and also the Citie Burys, in the Corynthian 

 bosome, commonly called Sinus Corinthiacus, have bene 

 swallowed up with the Sea, and are not at this day to 

 be discerned : By which accident America grew to be 

 unknowen of long time, unto us of the later ages, and 

 was lately discovered againe, by Americus Vespucius, in 

 the yeere of our Lord 1497. which some say to have 

 bene first discovered by Christophorus Columbus a 

 Genuois, Anno 1492. 



The same calamitie happened unto this Isle of Atlantis 

 600. and odde yeres before Plato his time, which some 

 of the people of the Southeast parts of the world ac- 

 compted as 9000. yeeres : for the maner then was to 

 reckon the Moone her Period of the Zodiak for a yeere, 

 which is our usual moneth, depending a Luminari minori. 



So that in these our dayes there can no other mayne 

 or Islande be found or judged to bee parcell of this 

 Atlantis, then those Westerne Islands, which beare now 

 the name of America : countervailing thereby the name 

 of Atlantis, in the knowledge of our age. 



Then, if when no part of the sayd Atlantis was 

 oppressed by water, and earthquake, the coasts round 

 about the same were navigable : a farre greater hope now 

 remaineth of the same by the Northwest, seeing the 

 most part of it was (since that time) swallowed up with A minore ad 

 water, which could not utterly take away the olde deeps ma J us - 

 and chanels, but rather, be an occasion of the inlarging 

 VII 161 L 



