Varieties: or, A surveigh of rare and excellent matters necessary and delectable for all sorts of persons. Wherein the principall heads of diverse sciences are illustrated, rare secrets of naturall things unfoulded, &c. Digested into five bookes, whose severall chapters with their contents are to be seene in the table after the epistle dedicatory. By David Person, of Loghlands in Scotland, Gentleman.

SECT. 11.

Of the Earth, that it is the lowest of all the Elements; its division, first into three, then into foure parts; and some different opinions concerning them recon∣ciled.

THe Earth is as the heaviest, so the lowest; subsidit tellus though divers admit not the waters to bee higher than the earth; of which opinion Plato seemes to mee to be, placing the spring of Rivers and Fountaines in orco or ca∣vities of the earth.

The former opinion our famous Buchanan ele∣gantly illustrateth, in his first Booke de Sphaera,

Aspice cumpleuis è littore concita velis Puppis eat, sensim se subducente Carina Linteaque & su••mo apparent Carche sia maio Nec minus è naviterram spectantibus unda In medio assurgens, &c.

Which argueth rather the Earth to be round, nor that the Seas or waters are higher than it: so it may be confidently enough said, that the water is above, about, and in the Earth, yea and dispersed thorough it, as the blood is diffused and dispersed thorough the body or man or beast, from its spring the Liver, the Orcum (as we may say) of it.

This Earth alwayes by the Geographers of old was divided into three parts,* 1.1 viz. Europe, Asia, Africk, not knowing any further, but suffereth now a new partition or division; since the dayes of Co∣lumbus, who in the yeare 1492, by an enterprize (to the eternall memory of his name) made disco∣very of America,* 1.2 added by our moderne Mappes as a fourth part, which (according to our late Navi∣gators and discoverers, shall bee found to exceede the other three in extent; from whence the gold and silver commeth hither as Merchant wares, oc∣casioning all the dearth we have now, considering how things were in value the dayes of our Fathers, as Bodin, in his paradoxes against Malestrot, aver∣reth; so that the profuse giving of their gold for our trifies,* 1.3 through the abundance of their inexhaustible gold mynes, maketh now, by the abundance of mo∣ney, which formerly was not; that a thing shall cost ten, yea twenty, which before was had for one or two▪

Mercator, that most expert Cosmographer, ex∣pecteth as yet the fifth part of the Earth, intituling it Terra Australis; the Spaniards in their Cardes, Terra dell fuego, which must be by South, that Sea descried by Magellanes: So that by his supputation the world shall be divided yet in three, making Eu∣rope, Asia, Africk but one, as but one Continent, which in effect it is; America, and this looked for terra Australis, the other two.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Division of the Earth.
• * 1.2

  Of America.
• * 1.3

  What maketh all things so deare now.