For in this honest, worthy, harmless hell,
There ne'er did any damned Devil dwell;
And th' owner of it gains by 't more true glory,
Than Rome doth by fantastic Purgatory.
A long mile thus I passed, down, down, steep, steep,
In deepness far more deep, than Neptunes deep,
Whilst o'er my head (in fourfold stories high)
Was earth, and sea, and air, and sun, and sky:
That had I died in that Cimmerian[1] room,
Four elements had covered o'er my tomb:
Thus farther than the bottom did I go,
(And many Englishmen have not done so;)
Where mounting porpoises, and mountain whales,
And regiments of fish with fins and scales,
'Twixt me and heaven did freely glide and slide,
And where great ships may at an anchor ride:
Thus in by sea, and out by land I past,
And took my leave of good Sir George at last.
The sea at certain places doth leak, or soak into the mine, which by the industry of Sir George Bruce, is all conveyed to one well near the land; where he hath a device like a horse-mill, that with three horses and a great chain of iron, going downward many fathoms, with thirty-six buckets fastened
- ↑ Cimmerian.—Pertaining to the Cimmerii, or their country; extremely and perpetually dark. The Cimmerii were an ancient people of the land now called the Crimea, and their country being subject to heavy fogs, was fabled to be involved in deep and continual obscurity. Ancient poets also mention a people of this name who dwelt in a valley near Lake Avernus, in Italy, which the sun was said never to visit.
