. . neither could we at any time in whole fourteen days
together find the aire so cleare as to be able to take the height of
sunne or starre . . . after our departure from the heate we always
found our bodies, not as sponges, but strong and hardened, more able to
beare out cold, though we came out of the excesse of heate, then
chamber champions could hae beene, who lye in their feather beds till
they go to sea.
". . . Trees without leaves, and the ground without greennes in these
months of June and July . . . as for the cause of this extremity, they
seem . . . chiefest we conceive to be the large spreading of the Asian
and American continent, which (somewhat Northward of these parts) if
they be not fully joyned, yet seeme they to come very neere one to the
other. From whose high and snow-covered mountains, the North and
Northwest winds (the constant visitants of those coasts) send abroad
their frozen nimphes, to the infecting of the whole aire with this
insufferable sharpnesse. . . . Hence comes the generall squalidnesse
and barrennesse of the countrie, hence comes it that in the midst of
their summer, the snow hardly departeth .
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