A.D. 



I 57 8. 



Extremitie 

 causeth men to 

 devise new 

 arts and re- 

 medies. 



Hard shifts. 



[III. 85.] 



Strange won- 

 ders. 



THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



amongst the yce. They had their ship stricken through 

 and through on both sides, their false stemme borne quite 

 away, and could goe from their ships in some places 

 upon the yce very many miles, and might easily have 

 passed from one Hand of yce to another even to the 

 shore, and if God had not wonderfully provided for 

 them and their necessitie, and time had not made them 

 more cunning and wise to seeke strange remedies for 

 strange kindes of dangers, it had bene impossible for 

 them ever to have escaped : for among other devises, 

 wheresoever they found any Hand of yce of greater 

 bignesse then the rest (as there be some of more then 

 halfe a mile compasse about, and almost forty fadome 

 high) they commonly coveted to recover the same, and 

 thereof to make a bulwarke for their defence, whereon 

 having mored anker, they road under the lee therof for 

 a time, being therby garded from the danger of the lesser 

 driving yce. But when they must needes forgoe this 

 new found fort by meanes of other yce, which at length 

 would undermine and compasse them round about, and 

 when that by heaving of the billow they were therewith 

 like to be brused in peeces, they used to make fast the 

 shippe unto the most firme and broad peece of yce they 

 could find, and binding: her nose fast thereunto, would fill 

 all their sayles whereon the winde having great power, 

 would force forward the ship, and so the shippe bearing 

 before her the yce, & so one yce driving forward another, 

 should at length get scope & searoome. And having 

 by this meanes at length put their enemies to flight, 

 they occupyed the cleare place for a prettie season among 

 sundry mountaines and Alpes of yce. One there was 

 found by measure to be 65 fadome above water, which 

 for a kind of similitude, was called Salomons porch. 

 Some thinke those Hands eight times so much under 

 water as they are above, because of their monstrous 

 weight. But now I remember I saw very strange 

 wonders, men walking, running, leaping and shooting 

 upon the mayne seas 40. myles from any land, without 



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