On the Universe

To the candid reader.

Since, after having prepared a monument for this Japhetic land of ours, which by fable men have called Europe, by which the totality of the Ishmaelites might be brought back into the unity of reason with us, I have decided to explain as broadly as I can not only Cosmography the study of the structure of the universe, but especially to expose those parts of Chorography the mapping of specific regions from which the rights of the whole have proceeded, I have therefore taken care to have a special treatment of Syria, or the Holy Land, and Celtic lands reprinted, along with the reasons for their own laws. For since I have promised that the Atlantis and the other regions which were unknown to Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy, the ancient geographer will be reduced by me into a compendium together with the histories of their discoverers, and will be issued in Latin from the many writings of the Portuguese and Spaniards set forth in their own vernacular tongue, I shall meanwhile strive, so that I do not grow sluggish in leisure, even while I write those things, to reprint these, and to primary authority and reason

continues from previous page: declare the safeguard of the seas.