LONDON:
Printed for Giles Widdowes, at the Green-Dragon
in St. Paul’s-Church-yard, 1674.
The Preface.
The Terrestrial World is by our learned Geographers divided into four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa and America so named from Americus Vespucius the Florentine, Seven years after Columbus; although Columbus and Cabota deserved rather the honour of being Godfathers to it: notwithstanding by this name it is now known to us, but was utterly unknown to the Ancient Europeans before their times, I will not say to the Africans and Asians, for Plato in his Timeus relateth of a great Island called Atlantis, and Philo the Jew in his book De mundo, that it was over-flowen with water, by reason of a mighty Earthquake; The like happened to it 600 years before Plato: thus was the Atlantick Ocean, caused to be a Sea, if you will believe the same Philosopher, who flourished 366 years before the Birth of our Saviour.