EMBRACING OF LAND AND SEA. 181 



were sorcerers and idolatrers, fell sodainely to mine, so as LlB&amp;gt; 

 a great parte thereof was raised vp and carried away 3 and 

 many of the Indians smothered, and that which seems in 

 credible (yet testified by men of credit) the earth that was 

 ruined and so beaten downe, did runne and slide vpon the 

 land for the space of a league and a halfe, as it had beene 

 water or wax molten, so as it stopt and filled vppe a Lake, 

 and remayned so spread over the whole countrey. 



CHAP, xxvii. How the land and sea imbrace one an other. 



I will end with this element of earth, vniting it to the 

 precedent of water, whose order and embracing is truely of 

 it selfe admirable. These two elements have one spheare 

 divided betweene them, and entertaine and embrace one 

 another in a thousand sortes and maners. In some places 

 the water encounters the land furiously as an enemy, and 

 in other places it invirons it after a sweete and amiable 

 manner. There are partes whereas the sea enters far within 

 the land, as comming to visite it; and in other partes the 

 land makes restitution, casting his capes, points, and tongues 

 farre into the sea, piercing into the bowelles thereof. In 

 some partes one element ends and another beginnes, yeeld- 

 ing by degrees one vnto another. In some places, where 

 they ioyne, it is exceeding deepe, as in the Hands of the 

 South Sea, and in those of the North, whereas the shippes 

 ride close to the land ; and, although they found three score 

 and tenne, yea foure score fadomes, yet do they finde no 

 bottome, which makes men coniecture that these are pikes 

 or poynts of land which rise vp from the bottome, a matter 

 woorthy of great admiration. Heerevpon a very expert 

 Pilote said vnto me, that the Hands which they call of 

 Woolves, and others, that lie at the entry of the coast of 

 New Spaine, beeing called Cocos, were of this manner. 



