[203] Morton here apparently refers at second hand to Aristotle’s _resumé_ of the ancient belief of five zones, two only of which were habitable. _Meteorologica_, B. II. ch. v. § 11.
[204] From this passage it would appear that the Isle of Sall and the tropical waters, which Morton in this chapter refers to as having been visited by him, were in the neighborhood of the Western and Cape Verde Islands. In his time the word _tornado_ had probably not been adopted into the English language, and in writing it Morton gives to the letter _d_ the peculiar Western Island or Portuguese pronunciation.
[205] Morton here confounds Davis with Hudson. Davis’s three voyages were made in 1585-6-7, and it was in the first of them that he discovered the straits which bear his name. He afterwards made five voyages to the East Indies, in the last of which he was killed in a fight with some Japanese on the coast of Malacca. Hudson made four voyages between 1607 and 1610, during the last of which he passed a winter, frozen in, near the entrance to Hudson Bay. His crew mutinied, and turned him adrift in an open boat, on the 22d of July, 1610. He was never heard of again; and it is his “fate,” probably, which Morton had in mind. No other noted discoverer of the Northwest Passage was lost prior to 1634. The discovery of that passage, however, then excited as active an interest as it has since, or does now. In 1632 Edward Howes sent out to Governor Winthrop a printed “Treatise of the North-West Passage” (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 480) which is still in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[206] The phrase in the _Meteorologica_ (_ubi supra_, 117, _note_ 1.) is, “the parts under the Bear (_i.e._, north) by cold are uninhabitable.”
Impiger extremos curris mercator ad Indos, Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.
[208] “18. Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.
“19. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?”
[209] Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Ashton Phillips in Somerset, has already been frequently referred to in the introductory portions of this volume. Of an old West Country family and pure English descent, he was born about the year 1560 (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vii. p. 329). He early devoted himself to a military and naval life, and in 1591 served under Essex at the siege of Rouen. Subsequently he is said to have been wounded, either at Amiens, or during the siege of Paris by Henry IV. In consequence of his services he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth royal governor of Plymouth, and in 1597 was designated as one of the staff of Essex in the Ferrol expedition, with the title of Sergeant-Major. In 1601 he was concerned in Essex’s insurrection, and was one of the principal witnesses against the Earl at his trial. After a considerable period of imprisonment he was released, and, on the accession of James I., was reappointed governor of Plymouth. In 1605 he became interested in American discovery and colonization, and in 1607 he was one of the projectors of the Popham colony in Maine. During the next thirteen years he was engaged in fishing and trading ventures to New England, and indefatigable in collecting information as to America. (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 79.) In 1620 he procured from James I. the great patent of the Council for New England. In 1623 he sent out the Robert Gorges expedition which settled itself at Wessagusset. (_Supra_, 2-4.) His subsequent connection with Morton, and his intrigues against the Massachusetts colony and charter, have been sufficiently referred to in this volume. During the Civil War Gorges espoused the royal side, and was made a prisoner when Fairfax captured Bristol in August 1645. He died probably about the 10th of May 1647, as he was buried on the 14th of that month.