In the yeere 590. before the incarnation of Christ there went out of Spaine a fleete of Carthaginian marchants[1] vpon their owne proper costs and charges, which sailed toward the west through the high seas to see if they could finde any land: and they sailed so farre, that they found at last the Islands, which we now call the Antiles and Noua Spagna: which Gonzalo Fernandes de Ouiedo saith[2] were then discouered, although Christopher Columbus afterwards by his trauaile got more exact knowledge of them, and hath left vs an euident notice where they be. But all these historians, which wrote of these Antiles before, as of doubtfull and vncertaine things, and of places vndiscouered, doe now plainly confesse the same to be the countrey of Noua Spagna.
In the yeere 520. before the incarnation, and after the setting out of the aforesaid army, Cambyses king of Persia tooke Egypt,[3] after whom succeeded Dorius the sonne of Histaspis, and he determined to make an ende to the enterprise which king Sesostris had begun, if they had not told him that the Red sea was higher then the land of Egypt, and that by means of the salt sea comming into the riuer Nilus, all the prouince would haue been lost and vndone for hunger and thirst. For the fresh water of the riuer Nilus doth ouerflowe the whole countrey, and the inhabitants haue no other water then that for their drinke: whereupon he left his first purpose of prosecuting that enterprise.
A digression. Now by the way I shall not swarue much from my matter, if I speak a word or two of some things incident to this discourse. The Egyptians say[4] that they had in their countrey certaine vermine like vnto rats, whereof many be halfe like earth and the other halfe like a vermine. One kinde of them keepe the water, and another kinde the land. For my part I thinke that these be they, which breake the serpents egges, whereof there are many in the riuer Nilus, which also be called Crocodiles: which in times past by report were so inchanted, that thereby they could not hurt any person. But when they were deliuered from their inchantment made by the Egyptians arte,[5] and letters, then they endeuoured to kill people, wilde beasts and cattell, doing very much harme, specially those which liue in
