I would observe all those movements of the sea and what causes them: the moon, as people commonly believe; or the earth's motion, which Galileo so earnestly proves and firmly demonstrates in the fourth dialogue of his System of the World; or winds, as some maintain.

Why is this motion scarcely perceptible in that quiet Ocean of Zur, “in the Pacific Sea,” most violent in our British seas, and so strong, irregular and varied in the Mediterranean and Red Sea? Why should the current in the Atlantic Ocean continually flow away from the north in some places and towards it in others? And why is the journey one way quicker than the return?

So, too, in the Indian Ocean, merchants travel from Malabar to Madagascar in three weeks, as Scaliger discusses, but scarcely return in three months, with the same or similar winds. The continual current flows from east to west.

Whether Mount Athos, Pelion, Olympus, Ossa, Caucasus and Atlas are as high as Pliny, Solinus and Mela report, above clouds and atmospheric phenomena, “where neither breezes nor winds blow”—so high that climbers very often die suddenly because the air is so thin. Are they 1,250 paces high, according to Dicaearchus's measurement; or seventy-eight miles vertically, as Jacopo Mazzoni says in sections 3 and 4, explaining Aristotle's passage about Mount Caucasus;

and as the Jesuit Blancanus argues from the demonstrations concerning twilight by Clavius and Nonius? Or rather thirty-two stadia, as the most widely accepted opinion has it; or four miles, a vertical height that no mountain exceeds, and which equals the sea's greatest depths—1,580 paces, according to Scaliger, exercise 38, though others say a hundred paces.

I would see the interior of America: whether there is such a great city as Manoa, or El Dorado, in that golden empire, where the highways, one writer reports, are as well travelled as those between Madrid and Valladolid in Spain; or such Amazons as he describes, or gigantic Patagonians in Chica; and that marvellous mountain Ybouyapab in northern Brazil, “whose ridge spreads out into a most delightful plain,” and so forth; or Pariacaca, rising so high in Peru.

How high is the peak of Tenerife: seventy miles, or fifty, as Patrizi holds, or nine, as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes? I would see that strange Lake Cirknickzersey in Carniola, whose waters gush from the ground so fast that they can overtake a swift horseman, and shortly afterwards are swallowed up with equally incredible speed. Lazius and Warnerus take this as evidence that the Argonauts sailed underground.

And that vast cavern or pit called Esmellen in Muscovy, “which is seen gaping fearfully,” and so forth: if anything happens to fall into it, it makes such a roaring noise that no thunder, artillery or engine of war can equal it. Another such place is Gilber's Cave in Lapland, and there are many like them.

I would examine the Caspian Sea and see where and how it discharges its water after receiving the Volga, Jaxartes, Oxus and those great rivers: at the mouth of the Ob, or where?

What outlet has the Mexican lake, or Lake Titicaca in Peru, or that circular pool in the valley of Terapeia mentioned by Acosta, book 3, chapter 16? It is hot in a cold country; its spring boils up in the middle over an area twenty feet square, and it has no outlet except evaporation. And what of the Dead Sea in Palestine, or Lake Trasimene by Perugia in Italy;

or the Mediterranean itself? For a perpetual current flows into the Levant from the ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar, and likewise through the Thracian Bosporus from the Euxine, or Black Sea, besides all those great rivers—the Nile, Po, Rhône and the rest. How is all this water used up: by the sun, or otherwise?

I would discover, with Trajan, the sources of the Danube, Ganges and Oxus; see the Egyptian pyramids, Trajan's bridge, the Sibyl's grotto, Lucullus's fishponds, the church of Nidaros, and so forth.

And, if I could, I would observe what becomes of swallows, storks, cranes, cuckoos, nightingales, redstarts and many other kinds of songbirds, waterfowl, hawks and so on. Some are seen only in summer, some in winter; some appear in the snow and at no other time: each has its season. In winter not a bird can be found in Muscovy, but in spring the woods and hedges are suddenly full of them, says Herberstein. How does this happen?

Do they sleep in winter like Gesner's Alpine mice? Or do they lie hidden, as Olaus asserts, at the bottom of lakes and rivers, “holding their breath”? Fishermen in Poland and Scandinavia often find them so, two together, mouth to mouth and wing to wing; and when spring comes they revive, or do so if brought into a heated room or beside the fire.

Or do they follow the sun, as Peter Martyr clearly establishes from his own experience in book 2 of his Babylonian Embassy? When he was ambassador in Egypt, he saw swallows, Spanish kites and many other European birds flying quite freely and in great numbers around Alexandria in December and January, “where the trees and gardens were then in bloom.”

Or do they hide in caves, rocks and hollow trees, as most people think; in deep tin mines or sea cliffs, as Mr Carew reports? For my part I conclude about them all as Münster does about cranes and storks: where they come from and where they go is “still undiscovered”—as yet we do not know. We see them here, some in summer and some in winter. They certainly come and go at night. In the plains of Asia, he says, storks gather on an appointed day; the last to arrive is torn to pieces, and then they depart.