A.D. 

 1578. 



The people of 

 Meta Incog- 

 nita like unto 

 Samoeds. 



Their native 

 colour. 



THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



degrees and a halfe, which before was supposed to be 

 part of the firme land of America, and also al the rest 

 of the South side of Frobishers straites, are all severall 

 Islands and broken land, and likewise so will all the 

 North side of the said straites fall out to be as I thinke. 

 And some of our company being entred above 60. leagues 

 within the mistaken straites in the third voyage men- 

 tioned, thought certainely that they had discryed the 

 firme land of America towards the South, which I thinke 

 will fall out so to be. 



These broken lands and Islands being very many in 

 number, do seeme to make there an Archipelagus, which 

 as they all differ in greatnesse, forme, and fashion one 

 from another ; so are they in goodnesse, colour, and 

 soyle much unlike. They all are very high lands, moun- 

 taines, and in most parts covered with snow even all 

 the Sommer long. The Norther lands have lesse store 

 of snow, more grasse, and are more plaine Countreys : 

 the cause whereof may be, for that the Souther Hands 

 receive all the snow, that the cold winds and percing 

 ayre bring out of the North. And contrarily, the North 

 parts receive more warme blasts of milder ayre from the 

 South, whereupon may grow the cause why the people 

 covet to inhabit more upon the North parts then the 

 South, as farre as we can yet by our experience perceive 

 they doe. These people I judge to be a kind of Tartar, 

 or rather a kind of Samoed, of the same sort and 

 condition of life that the Samoeds bee to the North- 

 eastwards beyond Moscovy, who are called Samoeds, 

 which is as much to say in the Moscovy tongue as 

 eaters of themselves, and so the Russians their borderers 

 doe name them. And by late conference with a friend 

 of mine (with whom I did sometime travell in the parts 

 of Moscovy) who hath great experience of those Samoeds 

 and people of the Northeast, I find that in all their maner 

 of living, those people of the Northeast, and these of the 

 Northwest are like. They are of the colour of a ripe 

 Olive, which how it may come to passe, being borne 



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