MEMBER 3. Air corrected. With a digression on air.

As a long-winged hawk, first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft and for its pleasure makes many circuits in the air, soaring higher and higher until it reaches its full height, and then, when the game is flushed, comes down at speed and suddenly dives: so will I. Having at last reached these spacious fields of air, where I may range freely and exercise myself for recreation, I will roam for a while, wander around the world, rise to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and then descend to my former elements again.

On this journey I will first see whether the Oxford friar's account of those northern regions beneath the Pole is true. If I happen to meet the Wandering Jew, Elias the Adept or Lucian's Icaromenippus along the way, they shall be my guides. I will see whether there really are four such tidal channels and a great rock of lodestone that might make the compass needle continually turn in that direction;

and what the true cause of the compass's variation may be. Is it a magnetic rock, or the Pole Star, as Cardan thinks; some other star in the Bear, as Marsilio Ficino proposes; a magnetic meridian, as Maurolycus says; “or its position in a vein of the earth,” as Agricola suggests; the nearness of the adjoining continent, as Cabeus thinks; or some other cause, as Scaliger, Cortesius, the Coimbra commentators and Peregrinus argue?

Why does it point directly north at the Azores, but not elsewhere? In the Mediterranean, or Levant, some observers find that it varies by seven degrees, then twelve, then twenty-two. In the Baltic Sea near Raseburg in Finland, the needle spins round if ships come that way, although Martin Ridley writes otherwise: that near the Pole the needle can hardly be forced away from its direction.

It deserves investigation whether definite rules can be established for it—for example, “the variation at London is eleven degrees, elsewhere thirty-six,” and so forth. More extraordinary still, the variation itself changes in the same place: accurately measured now, it will be quite different a few years later. Until we have better information, let our Dr Gilbert and the Jesuit Niccolò Cabeo, who have both written substantial volumes on the subject, satisfy these investigators.

Whether the sea is open and navigable near the Arctic Pole, and which route is most promising: that of Bartison the Dutchman, directly beneath the Pole itself, which for certain reasons I think best; or by Davis Strait, or Novaya Zemlya.

Whether Hudson's report of a newly discovered ocean is true; whether there is any prospect of a passage by Button's Bay at fifty degrees, Hubberd's Hope at sixty, or the place marked “still farther” near Sir Thomas Roe's Welcome in North-west Fox, since the sea there regularly rises and falls fifteen feet in twelve hours. Our new charts tell us that California is an island, not a cape, and that west winds make the neap tides equal to the spring tides. Or whether there is any chance of passing through the Strait of Anian to China, by the promontory of Tabin.

If there is, I shall soon find out whether Marco Polo the Venetian's account of the great city of Quinsay and of Cambalu is true or false; whether such places exist, or whether, as the Jesuit Matteo Ricci has written, China and Cathay are one and the same, and the Great Khan of Tartary and the king of China are the same ruler; whether Xuntain and Quinsay, and the city of Cambalu, are that new Peking; or whether there is such a wall, four hundred leagues long, separating China from Tartary.

Whether Prester John is in Asia or Africa: Marco Polo the Venetian places him in Asia; the most widely accepted opinion is that he is emperor of the Abyssinians, in what was formerly Ethiopia, now Nubia, beneath the equator in Africa.

Whether Guinea is an island or part of the continent; or whether that hungry Spaniard's discovery of the Unknown Southern Land, or Magellanica, is as true as the discovery in Mercurius Britannius, or the one in Utopia, or the one in Lucinia. Yet it may very probably be so: for, extending as it does from the Tropic of Capricorn to the Antarctic Circle and lying in the temperate zone, it must surely reveal flourishing kingdoms to future generations in time, as America did to the Spaniards.

Schouten and Le Maire have done well in exploring the region of the Strait of Magellan, finding a more convenient passage to the Pacific Ocean. I think some of our modern Argonauts should pursue the rest.

As I pass Madagascar, I would see that great bird, the roc, which can carry a man and horse, or an elephant; and that Arabian phoenix described by Adricomius. I would see Egypt's pelicans and those Scythian griffins in Asia.

And afterwards, in Africa, I would examine the sources of the Nile: whether Herodotus, Seneca, Pliny in book 5, chapter 9, and Strabo in book 5 give the true cause of its annual flooding; whether Pigafetta gives a correct account of it, or of the Niger and Senegal. I would examine Cardan's explanations, Scaliger's and the rest.

Does it come from those Etesian winds, or from snow melting in mountains beneath the equator—for the Jordan overflows each year when the snow melts on Mount Lebanon—or from those heavy, continual downpours so common within the tropics when the sun is directly overhead? These cause vast floods in the Senegal, Marañón, Orinoco and the other great rivers of the torrid zone, which generally undergo the same changes at fixed seasons. With good agriculture and government, their regions may undoubtedly become as populous, as well cultivated and as fruitful as Egypt itself, or Cochinchina.