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them all, for my part, as Munster doth of Cranes and Storks: whence they come, whither they goe, incompertum adhuc, as yet we know not. We see them here, some in summer, some in winter: "Their comming and going is sure in the night: in the plaines of Asia (saith he) the storkes meet on such a set day, he that comes last is torn in peeces, and so they get them gon." Many strange places, Isthmi, Euripi, Chersonesi, creekes, havens, promontories, straights, lakes, bathes, rocks, mountaines, places, and fields, where Cities have bin ruined or swallowed, battels fought, creatures, Sea-monsters, Remora, &c. minerals, vegetals. Zoophites were fit to be considered in such an expedition, and amongst the rest that of Harbastein his Tartar lambe, n Hector Boethius goos

bearing tree in the Orchades, to which Cardan lib. 7. cap. 36. de rerum varietat. subscribes : • Vertomannus wonderfull palme, that fly in Hispaniola, that shines like a torch in the night, that one may well see to write; those sphericall stones in Cuba which nature hath so made, and those like Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Crowns, Swords, Sawes, Pots, &c. usually found in the metall-mines in Saxony about Mansfield, and in Poland near Nokow and Pallukie, as + Munster and others relate. Many rare creatures and novelties each part of the world affords: amongst the rest, I would know for a certain whether there be any such men, as Leo Suavius in his comment on Paracelsus de sanit. tuend. and Gaguinus records in his description of Muscovie, "that in Lucomoria, a Province in Russia, lye fast asleep as dead all winter, from the 27. of November, like frogges and swallowes, benumbed with cold, but about the 24. of April in the Spring they revive again, and goe about their business." I would examine that demonstration of Alexander Picolomineus, whether the earth's superficies be bigger than the seas; or that of Archimedes be true, the superficies of all water is even? Search the depth, and see that variety of Sea-monsters and fishes, Mare-maids, Sea-men,

* Porro ciconiæ quonam è loco veniant, quò se conferant, incompertum adhuc, agmen venientium, descendentium, ut gruum venisse cermmus, nocturnis opinor temporibus. In patentibus Asia campis certo die congregant se, eam quæ novissime advenit lacerant, inde avolant. Cosmog. 1. 4. c. 126. Comment. Muscov. n Hist. Scot. 1. 1. • Vertomannus 1. 5. c. 16. mentioneth a tree that bears fruits to eat, wood to burn, bark to make ropes, wine and water to drink, oyl and sugar, and leaves as tiles to cover houses, flowers, for clothes, &c. * Animal infectum Cusino, ut quis legere vel scribere possit sine alterius ope luminis. + Cosmog. lib. 1. cap. 455. & lib. 3.

cap. 1. habent ollas à natura formatas è terra extractas, similes illis à figulis factis, coronas, pisces, aves, et omnes animantium species. Ut soleni hirundines et ranæ præ frigoris magnitudine mori, et postea redeunte vere 24, Aprilis reviviscere.

Horses,

Horses, &c. which it affords. Or whether that be true which Jordanus Brunus scoffes at, that if God did not detain it, the Sea would overflow the earth by reason of his higher site, and which Josephus Blancanus the Jesuite in his interpretation on those mathematicall places of Aristotle, foolishly feares, and in a just tract proves by many circumstances, that in time the Sea will waste away the land, and all the globe of the earth shall be covered with waters; Risum teneatis amici? what the sea takes away in one place it addes in another. Mee thinks he might rather suspect the Sea should in time be filled by land, trees grow up, carcasses, &c. that all devouring fire, omnia devorans & consumens, will sooner cover and dry up the vast Ocean with sand and ashes. I would examine the true seat of that terrestriall Paradise, and where Ophir was whence Solomon did fetch his gold; from Peruana, which some suppose, or that Aurea Chersonesus, as Dominicus Niger, Arias Montanus, Goropius, and others will. I would censure all Plinie's, Solinus, Strabo's, Sir John Mandevill's, Olaus Magnus, Marcus Polus' lyes, correct those errors in navigation, reforme Cosmographicall Chartes, and rectifie longitudes, if it were possible; not by the Compass, as some dream, with Mark Ridley in his treatise of magneticall bodies, cap. 43. for as Cabeus magnet. philos. lib. 3. cap. 4. fully resolves, there is no hope thence, yet I would observe some better meanes to find them out.

I would have a convenient place to goe down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Hercules, P Lucian's Menippus, at St. Patrick's Purgatory, at Trophonius den, Hecla in Iseland, Ætna in Sicily, to descend and see what is done in the bowels of the earth; do stones and metalls grow there still? how come firre trees to be

digged out from tops of hills, as in our mosses, and marishes all over Europe? How come they to dig up fish bones, shells, beams, ironworks, many fathomes under ground, and anchors in mountains far remote from all seas. *Anno 1460. at Bernain Suitzerland 50. fathom deep a ship was dig'd out of a mountain, where they got metall ore, in which were 48. carcasses of men, with other merchandise. That such things are ordinarily found in tops of hils, Aristotle insinuates in his meteors, Pomponius Mela in his first book, c. de Numidia, and familiarly in the Alpes saith || Blancanus the Jesuite, the like is to be seen: Came this from Earth-quakes, or from Noah's floud, as Christians suppose, or is there a vicissitude of Sea and land,

2.

+ Vid. Pererium in Gen. Cor. à Lapide, & alios. In Necyomantia Tom. Fracastorius lib. de simp. Georgius Merula lib. de mem. Julius Billius, *Simlerus, Ortelius, Brachiis centum subterra reperta est, in qua quadfaginta octo cadavera inerant, Anchoræ, &c. Pisces & conche in montibus reperiuntur. Lib. de locis Mathemat. Aristot.

&c.

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as Anaximenes held of old, the mountaines of Thessaly would become Seas, and Seas again Mountaines? The whole world. belike should be new moulded, when it seemed good to those all-commanding Powers, and turned inside out, as we do haycocks in Harvest, top to bottom, or bottom to top or as we turn apples to the fire, move the world upon his Center; that which is under the Poles now, should be translated to the Equinoctiall, and that which is under the torrid Zone to the Circle Artique and Antartique another while, and so be reciprocally warmed by the Sun: or if the worlds be infinite, and every fixed star a Sun, with his compassing planets (as Brunus and Campenella conclude) cast three or four Worlds into one; or else of one world make three or four new, as it shall seem to them best. To proceed, if the earth be 21500. miles in 3 compass, its diameter is 7000. from us to our Antipodes, and what shall be comprehended in all that space? What is the Center of the earth? is it pure element onely, as Aristotle decrees, inhabited (as Paracelsus thinks) with creatures, whose Chaos is the earth or with Fairies, as the woods and waters (according to him) are with Nymphes, or as the Aire with Spirits? Dionisiodorus, a Mathematician in "Pliny, that sent a letter, ad superos after he was dead, from the Center of the earth, to signify what distance the same center was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42000. stadiums, might have done well to have satisfied all these doubts. Or is it the place of hell, as Virgil in his Æneides, Plato, Lucian, Dantes, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our Divines think? In good earnest, Anthony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian Colledge in Millan, in his great volume de Inferno. lib. 1. cap. 47. is stiffe in this tenent, 'tis a corporeall fire tow, cap. 5. l. 2. as he there disputes. "Whatsoever Philosophers write (saith * Surius) there be certain mouthes of hell, and places appointed for the punishment of mens souls, as at Hecla in Iseland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living: God would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God." Kranzius Dan. hist. lib. 2. cap. 24. subscribes to this opinion of Surius, so doth Colerus cap. 12. lib. de immortal. anime (out of the authority belike of St. Gregory, Durand, and the rest of

Or plain, as Patricius holds, which Austin, Lactantius, and some others, held of old as round as a trencher. Li. de Zilphia & Pigmeis, they penetrate the earth as we do the aire. "Lib. 2. c. 112. * Commentar. ad annum 1537. Quicquid dicunt, Philosophi, quædam sunt Tartari ostia, et loca puDiendis animis destinata, ut Hecla mons, &c. ubi mortuorum spiritus visunrur, kc. voluit Deus extare talia loca, nt discaut mortales.

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the Schoolmen, who derive as much from Etna in Sicily, Lypara, Hyera, and those sulphureous Vulcanian ilands) making Terra del Fuego, and those frequent Vulcanes in America, of which Acosta lib. 3. cap. 24. that fearfull mount Hecklebirg in Norway, an especiall argument to prove it, "y where lamentable screeches and howlings are continually heard, which strike a terrour to the Auditors; fiery chariots are commonly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likenesse of crows, and divels ordinarily go in and out." Such another proofe is that place near the Pyramides in Egypt, by Cairo, as well to confirme this as the resurrection, mentioned by Kornmannus mirac. mort. lib. 1. cap. 38. Camerarius oper. suc. cap. 37. Bredenbachius pereg. ter. sanct. and some others, "where once a yeere dead bodies arise about March, and walk, after a while hide themselves again: thousands of people come yearly to see them." But these and such like testimonies others reject, as fables, illusions of spirits, and they will have no such locall known place, more than Styx or Phlegeton, Pluto's Court, or that poeticall Infernus, where Homer's soul was seen hanging on a tree, &c. to which they ferried over in Charon's boat, or went down at Hermione in Greece, compendiaria ad inferos via, which is the shortest cut, quia nullum à mortuis naulum eo loci exposcunt, (saith Gerbelius) and besides there were no fees to be paid. Well then, is it Hell, or Purgatory, as Bellarmine; or Limbus patrum, as Gallucius will, and as Rusca will (for they have made maps of it) or Ignatius parler? Virgil, sometimes Bishop of Saltburg (as Aventinus Anno. 745 relates) by Bonifacius Bishop of Mentz was therefore called in question, because he held Antipodes (which they made a doubt whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of Hell, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to Heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius, that held the earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of it; or Delos, as the fabulous Greeks fained: because when Jupiter let two Eagles loose, to flye from the world's ends East and West, they met at Delos. But that scruple of Bonafacius is now quite taken away by our latter Divines: Franciscus Ribera in cap. 14. Apocalyps. will have Hell a materiall and locall fire in the center of the earth, 200. Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words, Exivit sanguis de terrá-per stadia

a

Ubi miserabiles ejulantium voces audiuntur, qui auditoribus horrorem incu tiunt haud vulgarem, &c. Ex sepulchris apparent mense Martio, & rursus Descript. Græc. lib. 6. de Pelop.

sub terram se abscondunt, &c. clave Ignatii.

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mille sexcenta, &c. But Lessius lib. 13. de moribus divinis cap. 24. will have this locall hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone: because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplyed, will make a Sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square) which will abundantly suffice, Cùm certum sit, inquit, factâ subductione, non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum. But if it be no materiall fire (as Sco-Thomas, Bonaventure, Soncinas, Voscius, and others argue) it may be there or elsewhere, as Keckerman disputes System. Theol. for sure somewhere it is, certum est alicubi, etsi definitus circulus non assignetur. I will end the controversy in Austin's words, "Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosome is, and hell fire:" Fix à mansuetis, à contentiosis nunquam invenitur; scarce the meek, the contentious shall never finde. If it be solid earth, 'tis the fountain of metals, waters, which by his innate temper turns Aire into water, which springs up in severall chinks, to moisten the earth's superficies, and that in a tenfold proportion (as Aristotle holds) or else these fountains come directly from the sea, by secret passages, and so made fresh again, by running through the bowels of the earth; and are either thick, thin, hot, cold, as the matter or minerals are by which they pass; or as Peter Martyr Ocean. Decad. lib. 9. and some others hold, from fabundance of rain that fals, or from that ambient heat and cold, which alters that inward heat, and so per consequens the generation of waters. Or else it may be full of winde, or a sulphureous innate fire, as our Meteorologists enform us, which sometimes breaking out, causeth those horrible Earth-quakes, which are so frequent in these dayes in Japan, China, and oftentimes swallow up whole Cities. Let Lucian's Menippus consult with or aske of Tiresias, if you will not beleeve Philosophers, he shall cleare all your doubts when he makes a second voiage.

In the mean time let us consider of that which is sub dio, and finde out a true cause, if it be possible, of such accidents, Meteors, alterations, as happen above ground. Whence proceed that variety of manners, and a distinct character (as it were) to severall nations? Some are wise, subtil, witty; others dull, sad and heavy; some big, some little, as Tully de Fato, Plato in

Melius dubitare de occultis, quam litigare de incertis, ubi flamma inferni, &c. See Dr. Raynolds prælect. 55. in Apoc. As they come from the Sea, so they return to the Sea again by secret passages, as in all likelihood the Caspian Sea vents itself into the Euxine or Ocean. f Seneca quæst. lib. cap. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. de causis aquarum perpetuis.

Timæo,