WHOLE VOL. THE WEST INDIES VAZQUEZ DE ESPINOSA II 



were all one or else at least comnuinicated with each other. In the 

 deep waters of the world-wide Flood, rising 15 cubits deep over the 

 peaks of the highest and loftiest mountains, as is stated in chapter VII 

 of Genesis, "all the highest mountains, that were under the whole 

 heaven, were covered, and the water was 15 cubits deeper than they, 

 over all the mountains it covered." After the passage of the Flood, 

 the waters were gathered again to the seas, in which process the force 

 of the waters expanded and made some slight division of the earth, 

 and some narrow straits through the softest stretches, in the union 

 of one large body of water with another ; and there are even opinions 

 that at the present day the land of the New World is connected with 

 that of the Old, in a northerly region ; but it has not been possible 

 to verify this, on account of its great elevation and because that region 

 is frozen and uninhabitable through its extreme degree of excessive 

 cold. 



27. We know and are well acquainted with the coast and mainland 

 of Labrador, and 200 leagues farther N., up to the Rio Nevado 

 (Snowy River), and in that quarter it is some 40 leagues from the 

 island of Greenland, and near Iceland ; these are distant 50 leagues 

 more from Finmark, a Scandinavian province of the Kingdom of 

 Sweden, in the northernmost part of Europe. The Strait of Anian 

 lies between Tartary and the northernmost territory of New Spain, 

 beyond Quivira, and from Cape Mendocino it runs N. and S. from 

 56° to 68°3o', and it is this strait which alone divides the New World 

 from the Old ; it is 6 leagues across, and it connects the one sea with 

 the other, and divides the mainlands. 



28. Cape St. Augustine and Cape Blanco are points of land, or 

 promontories, lying between the great River Maraiion and Brazil ; 

 they have opposite them to the E., Cape Verde, African territory, 

 and they are distant from each other only 350 leagues ; it may be 

 that in the beginning these lands were closer together, shortly after 

 the end of the Flood, so that there was easy communication between 

 them, and that they became separated by the long passage of time 

 and of centuries, both because water keeps continually eating away 

 and hollowing out land, and likewise in consequence of great world- 

 wide earthquakes which have occurred in various epochs. In the 

 year 3165 after the Creation of the World, 802 before the birth of 

 Christ our Lord, when Azariah was reigning in Judah, there was a 

 great earthquake and convulsion, which almost broke up the bounds 

 of the earth. And in the times of the Emperor Valentinian, 364 

 years after the birth of Christ, there was another tremendous uni- 

 versal earthquake, over all the world, which bent and broke up the 



