136 STEATTS OF MAGELLAN. 



LITI. in. &quot;being lower then another. As in times past we finde it 

 Herodotus, written, that for the same consideration they gave over the 

 enterprize to win the Eed sea into Nile, in the time of 

 lovms. King Sesostris, and since, in the Empire of the Ottomans. 

 But for my part, I hold such discourses and propositions 

 for vaine, although this inconvenient should not happen, 

 the which I will not hold for assured. I beleeve there is 

 no humaine power able to beat and breake downe those 

 strong and impenetrable mountaines, which God hath placed 

 betwixt the two seas, and hath made them most hard 

 rockes, to withstand the furie of two seas. And although 

 it were possible to men, yet in my opinion they should 

 feare punishment from heaven in seeking to correct the 

 workes which the Creator by his great providence hath 

 ordained and disposed in the framing of this vniversall 

 world. Leaving this discourse of opening the land, and 

 ioyning both seas together, there is yet another lesse rash, 

 but very difficult and dangerous to search out. Whether 

 these two great gulphes do ioyne in any other part of the 

 world, which was the enterprize of Fernando Magellan, a 

 Portugal] gentleman, whose great courage and constancie 

 in the research of this subiect, and happy successe in the 

 finding thereof, gave the name of eternall memory to this 

 straight, which iustly they call by the name of the disco 

 verer, Magellan, of which straight we will intreate a little, 

 as of one of the greatest wonders of the world. Some have 

 beleeved that this straight which Magellan had discovered 

 in the South Sea was none, or that it was straightened, as 

 Don Alonso tie Ercilla writes in his Araucana ; and at this 

 day there are some that say there is no such straight, but 

 that they are ilands betwixt the sea and land, for that the 

 maine land endes there, at the end whereof are all ilautls, 

 beyond the which the one sea ioynes fully with the other, 

 or to speake better, it is all one sea. But in truth it is 

 most ccrtaine, there is a straight and a long and stretched 



