Whether that ever famous Genoese, Christopher Columbus, were sufficiently learned, that by reading of divine allegories, named Timœus, of Plato, whose subject is of the universall nature and frame of the whole world, under the person of a subtile and misterious priest, old Cricia, of Egypt, discoursing to Solon, an auncient and superannuat history of an island, in tyme of great antiquity, called Athlantides, lying to the west, by which Columbus might instruct his laboring understanding with a greater cliernes, that more then probable yt was the sun and moone, and all ye faier eyes of heaven, did not looke downe from above, nor shedd their influence uppon the things put under the beames of the wandring and lowest plannett confyned only to Europe, Asia, and Africa, running thereby half their courses without proffitt and in vaine, shyning upon the solitary waters and desolate places empty and desolate of man and other living creatures; or whether Columbus, being a great cosmographer, did well observe, that Asia, Europe, and Africk, concerning the longitude of the world, did conteyn in them but 180 visible degrees, and therefore did conceave yt to be most likely, that in the other 180 (which filleth up the whole course of the sun to the nomber of 360 degrees, as well observe our moderne writers intreating de America sive orbe novo) God would not suffer the waters only to possesse all, but would leave a place for the habitation of men, beasts, flying, and creeping creatures; or whether Columbus, by his entertaynment of a Biscan pilot.