GEORGE BESTS DISCOURSE ad. 



1578. 



The olde writers perswaded by bare conjecture, went 

 about to determine of those places, by comparing them 

 to their owne complexions, because they felt them to 

 bee hardly tollerable to themselves, and so took thereby 

 an argument of the whole habitable earth ; as if a man 

 borne in Marochus, or some other part of Barbarie, A comparison 

 should at the latter end of Sommer upon the suddeine, betweene Ma- 

 either naked, or with his thinne vesture, bee brought £ nz i an ^ 

 into England, hee would judge this Region presently not 

 to bee habitable, because hee being brought up in so 

 warme a Countrey, is not able here to live, for so suddeine 

 an alteration of the colde aire : but if the same man 

 had come at the beginning of Sommer, and so afterward 

 by little and little by certaine degrees, had felt and 

 acquainted himselfe with the frost of Autumne, it would 

 have seemed by degrees to harden him, and so to make it 

 farre more tollerable, and by use after one yeere or two, 

 the aire would seeme to him more temperate. It was 

 compted a great matter in the olde time, that there was a 

 brasse pot broken in sunder with frosen water in Pontus, 

 which after was brought and shewed in Delphis, in token 

 of a miraculous colde region and winter, and therefore 

 consecrated to the Temple of Apollo. 



This effect being wrought in the Parallel of fouretie 



three degrees in Latitude, it was presently counted a place 



very hardly and uneasily to be inhabited for the great 



colde. And how then can such men define upon other 



Regions very farre without that Parallel, whether they 



were inhabited or not, seeing that in so neere a place they 



so grossely mistooke the matter, and others their followers 



being contented with the inventions of the olde Authors, 



have persisted willingly in the same opinion, with more 



confidence then consideration of the cause : so lightly was 



that opinion received, as touching the unhabitable Clime 



neere and under the Poles. 



Therefore I am at this present to prove, that all the P™ 55-] 

 i j i • u s. iL 1 *1 r *. 4. *u • *. All the North 



land lying betweene the last climate even unto the point reg i ms are 



directly under either poles, is or may be inhabited, habitable. 



269 



