be discovered?  The explorers of these coasts offer no convincing explanation.  There are other authors who think that a large strait exists at the extremity of the gulf formed by this vast continent and which, we have already said, is eight times larger than the ocean.  This strait may lie to the west of Cuba, and would conduct these raging waters to the west, from whence they would again return to our east.  Some learned men think the gulf formed by this vast continent is an enclosed sea, whose coasts bend in a northerly direction behind Cuba, in such wise that the continent would extend unbrokenly to the northern lands beneath the polar circle bathed by the glacial sea.  The waters, driven back by the extent of land, are drawn into a circle, as may be seen in rivers whose opposite banks provoke whirlpools; but this theory does not accord with the facts.  The explorers of the northern passages, who always sailed westwards, affirm that the waters are always drawn in that direction, not however with violence, but by a long and uninterrupted movement.

Amongst the explorers of the glacial region a certain Sebastiano Cabotto, of Venetian origin, but brought by his parents in his infancy to England, is cited.  It commonly happens that Venetians visit every part of the universe, for purposes of commerce.  Cabotto equipped two vessels in England, at his own cost, and first sailed with three hundred men towards the north, to such a distance that he found numerous masses of floating ice in the middle of the month of July.  Daylight lasted nearly twenty-four hours, and as the ice had melted, the land was free.  According to his story he was obliged to tack and take the direction of west-by-south.  The coast bent to about the degree of the strait of Gibraltar.  Cabotto did not sail westward until he had arrived abreast of Cuba, which lay on his left.  In following this coast-line which he called Bacallaos,[1] he says that he recognised the same maritime currents flowing to the west that the Castilians noted when they sailed in southern regions belonging to them.  It is not merely probable, therefore, but becomes even necessary to conclude that between these two hitherto unknown continents there extend large openings through which the water flows from east to west.  I think these waters flow all round the world in a circle, obediently to the Divine Law, and that they are not spewed forth and afterwards absorbed by some panting Demogorgon.  This theory would, up to a certain point, furnish an explanation of the ebb and flow.

[Note 1:  The word Bacallaos is thought to be of Basque origin.  This designation for codfish is extremely ancient, and the land thus named appears on the earliest maps of America.]