GEORGE BEST'S DISCOURSE a.d. 



1578. 

 live without clothing, wherein they childishly are de- 

 ceived : for our Clime rather tendeth to extremitie of 

 colde, because wee cannot live without clothing : for this 

 our double lining, furring, and wearing so many clothes, 

 is a remedy against extremitie, and argueth not the 

 goodnesse of the habitation, but inconvenience and injury 

 of colde : and that is rather the moderate, temperate, and 

 delectable habitation, where none of these troublesome 

 things are required, but that we may live naked and 

 bare, as nature bringeth us foorth. 



Others againe imagine the middle Zone to be extreme 

 hot, because the people of Africa, especially the Ethio- 

 pians, are so cole blacke, and their haire like wooll 

 curled short, which blacknesse and curled haire they 

 suppose to come onely by the parching heat of the 

 Sunne, which how it should be possible I cannot see : 

 for even under the Equinoctiall in America, and in the 

 East Indies, and in the Hands Moluccae the people are 

 not blacke, but tauney and white, with long haire un- 

 curled as wee have, so that if the Ethiopians blacknesse Ethiopians 



came by the heat of the Sunne, why should not those bkc **]™* 

 A . J iTT 11111 1 • curled haire. 



Americans and Indians also be as blacke as they, seeing 



the Sunne is equally distant from them both, they abid- 

 ing in one Parallel : for the concave and convexe 

 Superficies of the Orbe of the Sunne is concentrike, and 

 equidistant to the earth ; except any man should imagine 

 somewhat of Aux Solis, and Oppositum, which indiffer- 

 ently may be applied aswel to the one place as to the 

 other. But the Sunne is thought to give no otherwise 

 heat, but by way of Angle in reflection, and not by 

 his neerenesse to the earth : for throughout all Africa, yea 

 in the middest of the middle Zone, and in all other 

 places upon the tops of mountaines there lyeth con- p* s * nne 

 tinuall snow, which is neerer to the Orbe of the Sunne, ,?f *"° ?, 



' m lit 1 1 Ttccl cTlcSiCj 



then the people are in the valley, by so much as the ^ ut one iy ^ 

 height of these mountaines amount unto, and yet the reflection. 

 Sunne notwithstanding his neerenesse, can not melt the 

 snow for want of convenient place of reflections. Also 



261 



