The Anatomy of Melancholy

Indeed, those who live on the same parallel as these Black people, around the Strait of Magellan, have white complexions; yet some in Prester John’s country in Ethiopia are brown, while the people of Ceylon and Malabar, on a parallel with them, are black again. Monomotapa in Africa and the island of São Tomé are extremely hot, both on the equator, with coal-black inhabitants; whereas in Peru the people are quite the opposite in colour, the climate very temperate or rather cold, and yet the latitude is the same.

Moscow, at fifty-three degrees latitude, is extremely cold, as those northern countries generally are, with one continuous hard frost throughout the winter. At fifty-two degrees latitude there is sometimes hard frost and snow all summer, as in Button’s Bay and elsewhere, or at intervals. Yet England, at nearly the same latitude, and Ireland are very moist, warm, and milder in winter than Spain, Italy, or France.

Is the sea responsible for this difference, and the air that comes from it? Why then is the Danube so cold near the Black Sea, along with Pontus, Bithynia, and all Thrace? Magnus calls them “cold regions,” yet their latitude is only forty-two degrees, which ought to be hot. Quivira, or New Albion in America, bordering the sea, was so cold in July that our Englishmen could scarcely bear it.

At Norumbega, in latitude forty-five degrees, the whole sea is frozen, though it lies farther south than we do. New England and the island of Cambriol Colchos, which that noble gentleman Mr Vaughan, or Orpheus Junior, describes in his Golden Fleece, lie at the same latitude as Brittany in France; yet their winter does not begin until January, and their spring until May. He considers the investigation worthy of an astrologer.

Does this come from easterly winds, or from melting ice and snow within the Arctic Circle? Or is it because the air is dense and takes longer to be warmed by the sun’s rays, but once heated, like an oven, keeps out the cold?

Our climates breed lice; Hungary and Ireland have a bad reputation in this respect. Go to the Azores, and by some hidden power of the air they are instantly destroyed, along with almost all our European vermin, according to Ortelius. Egypt is watered by the Nile not far from the sea, yet there it seldom or never rains. Rhodes, an island of the same nature, produces not a cloud, yet our islands are always dripping and tending towards rain.

The Atlantic Ocean is continually subject to storms, but in the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, there are seldom or never any. Do these and similar differences of heat and cold come from stars governing particular places, an “opening of the gates” in the divisions of the zodiac or constellations, the mansions of the moon, particular aspects of the planets, particular winds, or air that is dissolving or dense?