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XIII. To Sir John Smith Knight.
SIR,
THe first ground I set foot upon after this my second transma•…•… voyage was Trevere (the Scots Staple) in Zeland, thence 〈◊〉〈◊〉 sail'd to Holland, in which passage we might see divers Steeples and Tur•…•…ets under water, of Towns that as we were told were swallow∣ed up by a D•…•…luge within the memory of man: we went afterwards to the Hague, where ther are hard by, though in severall places, two wonderfull things to be seen, one of Art, the other of Nature; That of Art is a Waggon or Ship, or a Monster mix•…•… of both, like the Hippocentaure who was half man, and half horse; this Engin hath wheels and sayls that will hold above twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn or mov'd by nothing els, and will run, the wind being good, and the sayls hois'd up, above fifteen miles an hour upon the even hard sands: they say this in∣vention was found out to entertain Spinola when he came hither to treat of the last Truce. That wonder of Nature is a Church-Mo∣nument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with 365 Chil∣dren about them, which were all delivered at one birth; they were half male, half femal; the Bason hangs in the Church which carried them to be Christned, and the Bishops Name who did it; and the Story of this Miracle, with the year and the day of the month mentioned, which is not yet 200 years ago; and the S•…•…ory is this: That Countesse walking about her door after dinner, ther came a Begger-woman with two children upon her back 〈◊〉〈◊〉 beg alms, the Countesse asking whether those children were her own, she answered, she had them both at one birth and by one father, who was her husband; The Countesse would not onely give her a•…•…y alms, but revil'd her bitterly, saying, it was impossible for one man to get two children at once: The begger-woman being thus provok'd with ill words and without alms fell to imprecations, that it should please God to shew his judgment upon her, and that she might bear at one birth a•…•… many children as ther be dayes in the year, which she did before the same years end, having never born child before. We are now in North Holland, where I never saw so many, amongst so few, sick of L•…•…prosies; and the reason is, because they commonly eat abundance of fresh Fish. A Gentleman told