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                            WORKS ISSUED BY

The Hakluyt Society.

        EARLY VOYAGES TO TERRA AUSTRALIS, NOW CALLED AUSTRALIA.

                              M DCCC.LIX.

                             EARLY VOYAGES
                                   TO
                            TERRA AUSTRALIS,
                               NOW CALLED
                               AUSTRALIA:
  _A COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS, AND EXTRACTS FROM EARLY MANUSCRIPT MAPS,
  ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF DISCOVERY ON THE COASTS OF THAT VAST
  ISLAND_, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE TIME OF
                             CAPTAIN COOK.

                    Edited, with an Introduction, by
                       R. H. MAJOR, ESQ., F.S.A.

                 “Austrinis pars est habitabilis oris,
     Sub pedibusque jacet nostris.”
                     MANILIUS, _Astronomicon_, lib. i, lin. 237–8.

                                LONDON:
                    PRINTED FOR THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.
                              M.DCCC.LIX.

                                LONDON:
                  T. RICHARDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET.

                          THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.

   SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, G.C.St.S., F.R.S., D.C.L., Corr. Mem.
 Inst. F., Hon. Mem. Imp. Acad. Sc. St. Petersburg, &c., &c., PRESIDENT.

     THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE.                   }
                                                 } VICE-PRESIDENTS.
     REAR-ADMIRAL C. R. DRINKWATER BETHUNE, C.B. }

     JOHN BARROW, ESQ.

     RT. HON. LORD BROUGHTON.

     THE LORD ALFRED SPENCER CHURCHILL.

     CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, ESQ., F.S.A.

     RT. HON. SIR DAVID DUNDAS.

     SIR HENRY ELLIS, K.H., F.R.S.

     JOHN FORSTER, ESQ.

     LIEUT.-GEN. CHARLES RICHARD FOX.

     R. W. GREY, ESQ., M.P.

     EGERTON HARCOURT, ESQ.

     JOHN WINTER JONES, ESQ., F.S.A.

     HIS EXCELLENCY THE COUNT DE LAVRADIO.

     R. H. MAJOR, ESQ., F.S.A.

     THE EARL OF SHEFFIELD.

     RT. HON. LORD TAUNTON.

             CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, ESQ., HONORARY SECRETARY.

                                   TO
                     SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON,
                       G.C.ST.S., D.C.L., F.R.S.,
                            ETC., ETC., ETC.

 DEAR SIR RODERICK,

                        You have kindly permitted me to dedicate to you
this result of my investigations respecting the early explorations of
Australia. To none can a book on such a subject be more appropriately
offered than to yourself. To you geographers are pre-eminently indebted
for the promotion of Australian exploration in recent times, while your
ever-memorable scientific anticipation of the discovery of the
Australian gold fields must connect your name inseparably with the
history of a country, whose future greatness can be foreseen, but cannot
be estimated.

                                I remain,
                                    Dear SIR RODERICK,
                                            With much respect,
                                                  Yours very faithfully,
                                                          R. H. MAJOR.

 British Museum,
       August, 1859.

                               CONTENTS.

 A MEMORIAL ADDRESSED TO HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY PHILIP THE THIRD, KING
   OF SPAIN, by Dr. Juan Luis Arias, respecting the exploration,
   colonization, and conversion of the Southern Land, translated
   from the Spanish original                                           1

 RELATION OF LUIS VAEZ DE TORRES, concerning the discoveries of
   QUIROS, as his Almirante. Dated Manila, July 12, 1607. A
   translation, nearly literal, by Alexander Dalrymple, Esq., from a
   Spanish manuscript copy in his possession, reprinted from App. to
   vol. ii of Burney’s “Discoveries in the South Sea”                 31

 EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF DISPATCHES FROM BATAVIA; commencing
   January the 15th, 1644, and ending November the 29th following,
   reprinted from Dalrymple’s “Collections Concerning Papua”          43

 THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK OF CAPTAIN FRANCIS PELSART, in the
   “Batavia,” on the coast of New Holland, and his succeeding
   adventures, translated from Thevenot’s “Recueil de Voyages
   Curieux”                                                           59

 VOYAGE OF GERRIT THOMASZ POOL TO THE SOUTH LAND. Translated from
   Valentyn’s “Beschryvingh van Banda”                                75

 ACCOUNT OF THE WRECK OF THE SHIP “DE VERGULDE DRAECK” ON THE SOUTH
   LAND, and the expeditions undertaken, both from Batavia and the
   Cape of Good Hope, in search of the survivors and money and goods
   which might be found on the wreck, and of the small success which
   attended them. Extracted from MS. documents at the Hague, and
   translated from the Dutch                                          77

 DESCRIPTION OF THE WEST COAST OF THE SOUTH LAND, by Captain Samuel
   Volkersen, of the pink “Waeckende Boey,” which sailed from
   Batavia on the 1st of January 1658, and returned on the 19th of
   April of the same year. Extracted from MS. Documents at the Hague
   and translated from the Dutch                                      89

 EXTRACT TRANSLATED FROM BURGOMASTER WITSEN’S “Noord en Oost
   Tartarye”                                                          91

 ACCOUNT OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF CAPTAIN WILLIAM DAMPIER on the coast
   of New Holland, in 1687–88, being an extract from his “New Voyage
   round the World”                                                   99

 EXTRACT FROM SLOAN MS., 3236, entitled “The Adventures of William
   Dampier, with others [1686–87], who left Captain Sherpe in the
   South Seas, and travaled back over land through the country of
   Darien”                                                           108

 SOME PARTICULARS RELATING TO THE VOYAGE OF WILLEM DE VLAMINGH to
   New Holland in 1696. Extracted from MS. Documents at the Hague
   and translated from the Dutch                                     112

 EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE MADE TO THE UNEXPLORED SOUTH
   LAND, by order of the Dutch East India Company, in the years 1696
   and 1697, by the hooker “De Nyptang,” the ship “De Geelvink,” and
   the galiot “De Wesel,” and the return to Batavia. From MS.
   Documents at the Hague: translated from the Dutch                 120

 ACCOUNT OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF CAPTAIN WILLIAM DAMPIER on the coast
   of New Holland, in 1699, being an extract from “a Voyage to New
   Holland, etc., in the year 1699”                                  134

 A WRITTEN DETAIL OF THE DISCOVERIES AND NOTICEABLE OCCURRENCES in
   the voyage of the fluyt “Vossenbosch,” the sloop “D’Waijer,” and
   the patsjallang “Nova Hollandia,” despatched by the government of
   India, anno 1705, from Batavia by way of Timor to New Holland.
   From MS. Documents at the Hague: translated from the Dutch        165

 THE HOUTMAN’S ABROLHOS in 1727, translated from a publication
   entitled “De Houtman’s Abrolhos,” by Captain P. A. Leupe, of the
   Dutch Navy                                                        176

                      INSTRUCTIONS TO THE BINDER.

 The Maps to be placed in the following order.

 Jave la Grande                                    _to face_ page xxvii.

 The Londe of Java                                 _to face_ page xxix.

 Tasman’s Track                                    _to face_ page xcvii.

 Coast visited by the Waeckende Boey and Emeloort,
   two maps                                        _to face_ page 81.

 Terra Australis                                   _to face_ page 200.

                             INTRODUCTION.

When, at a period comparatively recent in the world’s history, the
discovery was made that, on the face of the as yet unmeasured ocean,
there existed a western continent which rivalled in extent the world
already known, it became a subject of natural enquiry whether a fact of
such momentous importance could for so many thousands of years have
remained a secret. Nor was the enquiry entirely without response. Amid
the obscurity of the past some faint foreshadowings of the great reality
appeared to be traceable. The poet with his prophecy, the sage with his
mythic lore, and the unlettered seaman who, with curious eye, had peered
into the mysteries of the far-stretching Atlantic, had each, as it now
appeared, enunciated a problem which at length had met with its
solution.[1]

In these later days, when the enquiry has assumed gigantic proportions,
and the facilities of investigation have been simultaneously increased,
much has been done towards bringing to light the evidence of various
ascertained or possible visitations from the Old World to the New, which
had previously remained unknown. A summary of them has already been laid
before the members of the Hakluyt Society by the editor of the present
volume, in his introduction to the “Select Letters of Columbus”, and
requires no repetition here.

Of the future results of that momentous discovery, what human
intelligence can foresee the climax? Already the northern half of that
vast portion of the globe is mainly occupied by a section of the
Anglo-Saxon family, earnest and active in the development of its native
energies; and among these, again, are many who look back with eager
curiosity to every yet minuter particular respecting the early history
of their adopted country.

A new field of colonization, second only to that of America, and
constituting, as far as is at present known, the largest island in our
globe, has in far more recent times been opened up by a slow and gradual
progress to a branch of the same expansive family. A future but little
inferior in importance may, without much imaginative speculation, be
assigned to them, and from them likewise may be reasonably expected the
most curious inquiry as to the earliest discoveries by their
predecessors of a land so vast in its dimensions, so important in its
characteristics, and yet so little known or reasoned upon by the
numerous generations of mankind that had passed away before them.

In endeavouring to meet this demand it must be premised, that while the
main object proposed in this volume is to treat of the early indications
of the island now recognized as Australia, anterior to the time of
Captain Cook, it is impossible to deal with the real or supposed
discoveries which may have taken place prior to that date, without
referring at the same time to the discovery of the adjacent island of
New Guinea and of the great southern continent, of both of which what we
now call Australia was in those times regarded as forming a part. The
investigation is one of the most interesting character in all its
stages, but beset with doubts and difficulties arising from a variety of
causes.

The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries,
presents these two phases of obscurity; that in the sixteenth century
(the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries) there are
_indications_ on maps of the great probability of Australia having been
already discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while
in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts
were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch
voyagers, but the documents _immediately_ describing these voyages have
not been found.

That, in so far as regards the Portuguese, this obscurity is mainly due
to a jealous apprehension lest lands of large extent and great
importance in the southern seas might fall into the hands of rival
powers to their own displacement or prejudice, may not only be
suspected, but seems to be affirmable from historical evidence.

It is stated by Humboldt (_Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau
Continent_, tom. iv, p. 70), upon the authority of the letters of Angelo
Trevigiano, secretary to Domenico Pisani, ambassador from Venice to
Spain, that the kings of Portugal forbad upon pain of death the
exportation of any marine chart which showed the course to Calicut. We
find also in Ramusio (_Discorso sopra el libro di Odoardo Barbosa_, and
the _Sommario delle Indie Orientali_, tom. i, p. 287.b) a similar
prohibition implied. He says that these books “were for many years
concealed and not allowed to be published, for convenient reasons that I
must not now describe.” He also speaks of the great difficulty he
himself had in procuring a copy, and even that an imperfect one, from
Lisbon. “Tanto possono,” he says, “gli interessi del principe.” Again,
in tom. iii of the same collection, in the account of the “Discorso d’un
gran Capitano del Mare Francese del luogo di Dieppa,” etc., now known to
be the voyage of Jean Parmentier to Sumatra in 1529, and in all
probability written by his companion and eulogist the poet Pierre
Crignon, the covetousness and exclusiveness of the Portuguese are
inveighed against. “They seem,” he says, “to have drunk of the dust of
the heart of king Alexander, for that they seem to think that God made
the sea and the land only for them, and that if they could have locked
up the sea from Finisterre to Ireland it would have been done long ago,”
etc.

Imputations of a similar nature are thrown on the Dutch East India
Company by so well informed a man as Sir William Temple, ambassador at
the Hague in the reign of Charles II, and who is a very high authority
on all matters concerning the republic of the United Provinces. In his
“Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning,” he makes the following curious
statement, which we give _in extenso_ as otherwise bearing upon the
subject of which we treat. See vol. iii of Sir William Temple’s _Works_,
p. 457.

“But the defect or negligence [in the progress of discovery since the
invention of the compass] seems yet to have been greater towards the
south, where we know little beyond thirty-five degrees, and that only by
the necessity of doubling the Cape of Good Hope in our East India
voyages: yet a continent has been long since found out within fifteen
degrees to the south, about the length of Java, which is marked by the
name of New Holland in the maps, and to what extent none knows, either
to the south, the east, or the west; yet the learned have been of
opinion, that there must be a balance of earth on that side of the line
in some proportion to what there is on the other; and that it cannot be
all sea from thirty degrees to the south pole, since we have found land
to above sixty-five degrees towards the north. But our navigators that
way have been confined to the roads of trade, and our discoveries
bounded by what we can manage to a certain degree of gain. _And I have
heard it said among the Dutch_, that their East India Company have long
since forbidden, and under the greatest penalties, any further attempts
of discovering that continent, having already more trade in those parts
than they can turn to account, and fearing some more populous nation of
Europe might make great establishments of trade in some of those unknown
regions, which might ruin or impair what they have already in the
Indies.”

Although the statement of so well informed and so impartial a man as Sir
William might almost be considered as conclusive, the Dutch have very
naturally been unwilling to abide by this severe judgment. An indignant
remonstrance against the imputation that they secreted and suppressed
the accounts of their early voyages, was published in August 1824, in
vol. ii of the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_, by Mr. J. van Wijck
Roelandszoon, who attributed the origin of this charge to ignorance of
the Dutch language on the part of those who made it. In vindication of
his assertions he referred to the publication, in 1618, of Linschoten’s
voyages both to the North and to the East Indies, also of Schouten and
Lemaire’s Circumnavigation of the Globe in 1615–18, which was published
in 1646. He referred to the fact that the voyages of Van Noort,
l’Hermite, and Spilbergen had also been published, and stated that,
generally speaking, such had been the case with all the voyages of the
Dutch as early as the year 1646, and that their discoveries were exactly
laid down in the 1660 edition of the maps of P. Goos.

He furthermore announced (in reply to an invitation which had been given
to the learned men of Holland, to fill up the gaps in their history
which had been complained of), that one of the learned societies of
Holland had offered a prize for a careful essay on the discoveries of
the Dutch mariners.[2]

In publishing this remonstrance, the editor of the _Nouvelles Annales
des Voyages_ judiciously observed, that if the reproach of jealousy
which applied to the Portuguese, did not apply to the Dutch, it was at
least true that some sort of carelessness had prevented either the
preservation or the publication of a great number of Dutch narratives,
amongst which he quoted those of De Nuyts, Van Vlaming, etc., to the
coasts of New Holland. We must not, however, lose sight of the fact,
that Sir William Temple’s charge of want of liberality is directed, not
against the Dutch in general, but only against the East India Company;
and further, that it contains two different imputations; first, that the
Company forbade exploration; and secondly, that they prohibited the
publication of those already made.

As to the first of these two charges it may have been just. The
commercial spirit of the seventeenth century had a general character of
narrowness, from which the East India Company was not exempt. The
conduct here imputed to them was in accordance with the regular and
wholesale destruction of spices, by which they tried to keep up the
value of this commodity. Too much importance, however, ought not to be
attached even to Sir William’s testimony, when, as in the present case,
it stands entirely alone. Every hostile statement with regard to the
East India Company made in Sir William’s time, may be regarded as at
least likely to have been dictated by party spirit. The directors of the
East India Company were so closely connected with the ruling but
unpopular party presided over by the De Witts, that the enemies of the
one were also the enemies of the others, and among these enemies there
were a number of the most eminent men, many of them distinguished
geographers.

As to the second charge, it must be allowed in justice to the Company
that such secrecy as is here imputed to them is not to be traced in
their general conduct. Commelyn, the compiler of the celebrated _Begin
ende Voortgangh_, published in 1646, had undoubtedly access to the
Company’s archives, and he discloses many facts which the Company would
seem much more interested to hide than what meagre knowledge they
possessed of Australia; Godfried, Udemans, Dr. O. Dapper, Witsen,
Valentyn, and besides these a host of map-makers and geographers, were
largely indebted to the Company for geographical materials. If we may
form any judgment from the dedications we find in books of the period,
we must consider their encouragement of the study of their dominions as
almost on a par with that afforded at the present day by the English
East India Company.

The fact that many accounts of Australian voyages which the Company
possessed were never published, may be accounted for in a much simpler
and more honourable manner. The Dutch voyages and travels that were
published were plainly intended for a large circle of readers, and were
got up as cheaply as possible. Thus, though thousands and thousands of
copies were sold, they have all now become scarce. A voyage which did
not contain strange adventures or striking scenes, had no chance of
popularity and remained unpublished. Thus, among other instances, a
picturesque account of Japan was published in the _Begin ende
Voortgangh_, whilst the extremely important account of De Vries’s voyage
to the same part of the world, which is far richer in geographical
materials than in interesting incidents, has remained in manuscript till
recently edited by Captain Leupe, of the Dutch navy.

It is with pleasure that we indulge the hope that the veil which has
thus hung over these valuable materials is likely, before very long, to
be entirely removed. The archives of the Dutch East India Company, a yet
unsifted mass of thousands of volumes, and myriads of loose papers, have
a short time since been handed over to the State Archives at the Hague,
where the greatest liberality is shown in allowing access to the
treasures they possess. Meanwhile the editor of the present volume need
hardly plead any excuse for not having attempted what no foreigner, be
his stay in Holland ever so long, could possibly accomplish; and he must
leave to those who will take up this matter after him, the satisfaction
of availing themselves of materials the importance of which he knows,
and the want of which he deeply deplores.

As has been already stated, in the earlier and more indistinct periods
of Australian discovery, even when some portions of the vast island had
been already lighted on, it remained a doubt whether New Guinea and the
newly seen lands did not form part of a great southern continent, in
which tradition in the first place, and subsequent discoveries, had
already established a belief.

The very existence of the belief in an extensive southern continent at
those early periods presents a twofold cause of doubt. It engendered _at
the time_ the supposition that every island to the south of what was
previously known, and of which the north part only had been seen, formed
a portion of that continent; while _to us_ who, from this distance of
time, look back for evidence, the inaccurate representation of such
discoveries on maps, especially in or near the longitude of Australia
(for longitude could be but laxly noticed in those days) leaves the
doubt whether that continent may not have been visited at the period
thus represented. Hence, manifestly, it will be requisite to bear well
in mind this broadly accepted belief in the existence of a great
southern continent, if we would form a right judgment respecting those
supposed indications of Australia which are presented on maps of the
sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries.

Among the very early writers, the most striking quotation that the
editor has lighted upon in connection with the southern continent, is
that which occurs in the _Astronomicon_ of Manilius, lib. i, lin. 234
_et seq._, where, after a lengthy dissertation, he says:

            “Ex quo colligitur terrarum forma rotunda:
            Hanc circum variæ gentes hominum atque ferarum,
            Aeriæque colunt volucres. Pars ejus ad arctos
            Eminet, _Austrinis pars est habitabilis oris,
            Sub pedibusque jacet nostris_.”

The latter clause of this sentence, so strikingly applying to the lands
in question, has been quoted as a motto for the title-page of this
volume. The date at which Manilius wrote, though not exactly
ascertained, is supposed, upon the best conclusions to be drawn from the
internal evidence supplied by his poem, to be of the time of Tiberius.

Aristotle also, in his _Meteorologica_, lib. ii, cap. 5, has a passage
which, though by no means so distinct as the preceding, speaks of two
segments of the _habitable_ globe, one towards the north, the other
towards the south pole, and which have the form of a drum. Aratus,
Strabo, and Geminus have also handed down a similar opinion, that the
torrid zone was occupied throughout its length by the ocean, and that
the band of sea divided our continent from another, situated, as they
suppose, in the southern hemisphere.[3]

To come down, however, to a later period, the editor is enabled, through
the researches of his lamented friend, the late learned and laborious
Vicomte de Santarem, to show from early manuscript maps and other
geographical monuments, how this belief in the existence of a great
southern continent was entertained anterior to the discoveries of the
Portuguese in the Pacific Ocean. In his _Essai sur l’Histoire de la
Cosmographie et de la Cartographie du Moyen Age_, vol. i, p. 229, the
Vicomte informs us that “Certain cartographers of the middle ages, still
continue to represent the _Antichthone_ in their maps of the world in
accordance with their belief that, beyond the ocean of Homer, there was
an inhabited country, another temperate region, called the “opposite
earth,” which it was impossible to reach, principally on account of the
torrid zone.

“The following are the maps of the world which represent this theory:—

“1. The map of the world in a manuscript of Macrobius, of the tenth
century; 2. The map of the world, in a manuscript of the eighth century
in the Turin library; 3. That of Cecco d’Ascoli, of the thirteenth
century; 4. The small map of the world, in one of the manuscripts of the
thirteenth century, of _l’Image du Monde_, by Gauthier de Metz, MS. No.
7791, Bibliothèque Impériale, Paris; 5. That of an Icelandic manuscript
of the thirteenth century, taken from the _Antiquitates Americanæ_; 6.
That in a manuscript of Marco Polo, of the fourteenth century (1350), in
the Royal Library of Stockholm; 7. That on the reverse of a medal of the
fifteenth century, in the Cabinet of M. Crignon de Montigny.

“The cartographers of the middle ages have admitted that as a reality
which, even to the geographers of antiquity, was merely a theory.”

The earliest _assertion_ of the discovery of a land bearing a position
on early maps analogous to that of Australia has been made in favour of
the Chinese, who have been supposed to have been acquainted with its
coasts long before the period of European navigation to the east.
Thevenot, in his _Relations de Divers Voyages Curieux_, part i, Preface:
Paris, 1663, says: “The southern land, which now forms a fifth part of
the world, has been discovered at different periods. The Chinese had
knowledge of it long ago, for we see that Marco Polo marks two great
islands to the south-east of Java, which it is probable that he learned
from the Chinese.” The statements of Marco Polo, which we quote from
Marsden’s translation, run thus:—

  “Upon leaving the island of Java, and steering a course between
  south and south-west seven hundred miles, you fall in with two
  islands, the larger of which is named Sondur, and the other Kondur.
  Both being uninhabited, it is unnecessary to say more respecting
  them. Having run the distance of fifty miles from these islands, in
  a south-easterly direction, you reach an extensive and rich
  province, that forms a part of the main land, and is named Lochac.
  Its inhabitants are idolaters. They have a language peculiar to
  themselves, and are governed by their own king, who pays no tribute
  to any other, the situation of the country being such as to protect
  it from any hostile attack. Were it assailable, the Grand Khan would
  not have delayed to bring it under his dominion. In this country
  sappan or brazil wood is produced in large quantities. Gold is
  abundant to a degree scarcely credible; elephants are found there;
  and the objects of the chase, either with dogs or birds, are in
  plenty. From hence are exported all those porcelain shells, which,
  being carried to other countries, are there circulated for money, as
  has been already noticed. Here they cultivate a species of fruit
  called berchi, in size about that of a lemon, and having a delicious
  flavour. Besides these circumstances there is nothing further that
  requires mention, unless it be that the country is wild and
  mountainous, and is little frequented by strangers, whose visits the
  king discourages, in order that his treasures and other secret
  matters of his realm may be as little known to the rest of the world
  as possible.

  “Departing from Lochac and keeping a southerly course for five
  hundred miles, you reach an island named Pentam, the coast of which
  is wild and uncultivated, but the woods abound with sweet scented
  trees. Between the province of Lochac and this island of Pentam, the
  sea, for the space of sixty miles, is not more than four fathoms in
  depth, which obliges those who navigate it to lift the rudders of
  their ships, in order that they may not touch the bottom. After
  sailing these sixty miles in a south-easterly direction, and then
  proceeding thirty miles further, you arrive at an island, in itself
  a kingdom, named Malaiur, which is likewise the name of its city.
  The people are governed by a king, and have their own peculiar
  language. The town is large and well built. A considerable trade is
  there carried on in spices and drugs, with which the place abounds.
  Nothing else that requires notice presents itself. Proceeding
  onwards from thence, we shall now speak of Java Minor.”

That this description does not apply to Australia the reader of the
present day may readily conclude. It has received its explanation in the
judicious notes of Marsden, who shows how, from the circumstances, it is
highly probablye that Lochac is intended for some part of the country of
Cambodia, the capital of which was named Loech, according to the
authority of Gaspar de Cruz, who visited it during the reign of
Sebastian, king of Portugal. See Purchas, vol. iii, p. 169. The country
of Cambodia, moreover, produces the gold, the spices, and the elephants
which Marco Polo attributes to Lochac. Pentam is reasonably supposed by
Marsden to be Bintam, and the island and kingdom of Malaiur (Maletur, in
the Basle edition of 1532, included in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus) to be
the kingdom of the Malays.

In the early _engraved_ maps of the sixteenth century, however, we see
the effects of this description exhibited in a form calculated to
startle the inquirer respecting the early indications of Australia. On
these maps we find laid down an extensive development of the great Terra
Australis Incognita trending northward to New Guinea; with which, on
some of these maps, it is made to be continuous, while on others it is
divided from it; and on the northernmost portion of this remarkably
delineated land occur the legends: “Beach provincia aurifera.” “Lucach
regnum.” “Maletur regnum scatens aromatibus.” “Vastissimas hic esse
regiones ex M. Pauli Veneti et Ludovici Vartomanni scriptis
peregrinationibus liquido constat.”

We have already explained from Marsden’s notes the reasonable rendering
of the name of Lucach or Lochac. The name of Beach, or rather Boeach, is
another form of the same name, which crept into the Basle edition of
Marco Polo of 1532, and was blunderingly repeated by the cartographers;
while for Maletur we have the suggestion of the Burgomaster Witsen, in
his _Noord en Oost Tartarye_, fol. 169, that it is taken from Maleto, on
the north side of the island of Timor, a suggestion rendered null by the
fact, apparently unknown to Witsen, that Maletur, as already stated, was
but a misspelling in the Basle edition for Malaiur. The sea in which, on
these early maps, this remarkable land is made to lie, is called Mare
Lantchidol, another perplexing piece of misspelling upon which all the
cartographers have likewise stumbled, and which finds its explanation in
the Malay words Laut Kìdol, or Chìdol, “_the South Sea_.” As, however,
this striking protrusion to the northward of a portion of the Great
Terra Australis Incognita on the early maps in a position so nearly
corresponding with that of Australia, may not have emanated solely from
the description of Marco Polo, the editor proposes to defer further
allusion to these maps until they present themselves in their due
chronological order among the documents and data of which he will have
to speak.

The earliest discovery of Australia to which _claim_ has been laid by
any nation is that of a Frenchman, a native of Honfleur, named Binot
Paulmier de Gonneville, who sailed from that port in June 1503, on a
voyage to the South Seas. After doubling the Cape of Good Hope, he was
assailed by a tempest which drove him on an unknown land, in which he
received the most hospitable reception, and whence, after a stay of six
months, he returned to France, bringing with him the son of the king of
the country. The narrative is given in a judicial declaration made by
him before the French Admiralty, dated the 19th of June, 1505, and first
published in the _Mémoires touchant l’Etablissement d’une Mission
Chrétienne dans la Terre Australe_, printed at Paris by Cramoisy, 1663,
and dedicated to Pope Alexander VII, by an “ecclésiastique originaire de
cette mesme terre.” The author gives his name in no other way than by
these initials, “J. P. D. C., Prêtre Indien.” This priest, as well as
his father and grandfather, was born in France; but his great
grand-father was one of the Australians, or natives of the southern
world, whom Gonneville had brought into France at his return from that
country, and whom he afterwards married to one of his own relations
there, he having embraced Christianity. The author of the account
himself being animated by a strong desire of preaching the gospel in the
country of his ancestors, spent his whole life in endeavouring to
prevail on those who had the care of foreign missions to send him there,
and to fulfil the promise the first French navigator had made, that he
should visit that country again. Unfortunately Gonneville’s journals, on
his return, fell into the hands of the English, and were lost. The
author, however, collected his materials from the traditions and loose
papers of his own family, and the judicial declaration above mentioned.
This account was to have been presented to the Pope, but it never was
printed till it fell into the hands of the bookseller Cramoisy. The
narrative is to the effect that some French merchants, being tempted by
the success of the Portuguese under Vasco de Gama, determined upon
sending a ship to the Indies by the same route which he had sailed. The
ship was equipped at Honfleur. “The Sieur de Gonneville, who commanded
her, weighed anchor in the month of June, 1503, and doubled the Cape of
Good Hope, where he was assailed by a furious tempest, which made him
lose his route, and abandoned him to the wearisome calm of an unknown
sea.” “Not knowing what course to steer, the sight of some birds coming
from the south determined them to sail in that direction in the hope of
finding land. They found what they desired, that is to say, a great
country, which, in their relations, was named the Southern India,
according to the custom, at that time, of applying indifferently the
names of the Indies to every country newly discovered.” They remained
six months at this land; after which the crew of the ship refused to
proceed further, and Gonneville was obliged to return to France. When
near home, he was attacked by an English corsair, and plundered of every
thing; so that his journals and descriptions were entirely lost. On
arriving in port, he made a declaration of all that had happened in the
voyage to the Admiralty, which declaration was dated July the 19th,
1505, and was signed by the principal officers of the ship.

In one part of the relation, this great southern land is said to be not
far out of the direct route to the East Indies. The land of Gonneville
has been supposed by some to be in a high southern latitude, and nearly
on the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope; and Duval and Nolin placed it
on their charts to the south-west from the Cape, in forty-eight degrees
south. The President De Brosses, author of _Histoire des Navigations aux
Terres Australes_, Paris, 1756, 2 vols. conjectured that it was south
from the Moluccas, and that it was, in fact, the first discovery of the
Terra Australis, since named New Holland.

Gonneville, however, is represented as carrying on during his stay a
friendly intercourse with the natives, whom he mentions as having made
some advances in civilization. This account is quite incompatible with
the character for treachery and barbarous cruelty, which we have
received of the natives of North Australia from all the more recent
voyagers.

Let the whole account, says Burney, be reconsidered without
prepossession, and the idea that will immediately and most naturally
occur is, that the Southern India discovered by Gonneville was
Madagascar. De Gonneville having doubled (passed round) the Cape, was by
tempests driven into calm latitudes, and so near to this land, that he
was directed thither by the flight of birds. The refusal of the crew to
proceed to the Eastern India, would scarcely have happened if they had
been so far advanced to the east as New Holland.

A more reasonable claim than the preceding to the discovery of Australia
in the early part of the sixteenth century, may be advanced by the
Portuguese from the evidence of various MS. maps still extant, although
the attempt made recently to attach the credit of this discovery to
Magalhaens in the famous voyage of the _Victoria_ round the world in
1520, is, as we shall endeavour to show, perfectly untenable. The claim
of this honour for Spain is thus asserted in the “Compendio Geografico
Estadistico de Portugal y sus posesiones ultramarinas,” by Aldama Ayala,
8vo, Madrid, 1855, p. 482. “The Dutch lay claim to the discovery of the
continent of Australia in the seventeenth century, although it was
discovered by Fernando Magalhaens, a Portuguese, by order of the Emperor
Charles V, in the year 1520, as is proved by authentic documents, such
as the atlas of Fernando Vaz Dourado, made in Goa in 1570, on one of the
maps in which is laid down the coast of Australia. The said magnificent
atlas, illuminated to perfection, was formerly preserved in the
Carthusian Library at Evora.”

A similar claim was also made for their distinguished countryman, though
the voyage was made in the service of Spain, in an almanack published at
Angra, in the island of Terceira, by the government press, anno 1832,
and composed, it is supposed, by the Viscount Sa’ de Bandeira, the
present minister of marine at Lisbon. In the examination of this
subject, the editor has had the advantage of the assistance of a friend
in Lisbon, who, in his researches among the remaining literary wealth of
that city, has exhibited an earnestness and an amount of care and
thought but too rarely witnessed in delegated investigations. The reader
will not wonder that the zeal of a true lover of literature has been
thrown into these researches, when he learns that they have been made by
Dr. John Martin, the well-known author (for it would be wrong to call
him the editor) in days now long gone by, of that most interesting and
important work, “Mariner’s Tonga Islands.” As will be presently seen,
the whole question of the possibility of the discovery of Australia
having been made by the Portuguese, in the first half of the sixteenth
century, is sufficiently enigmatical to call for a great extent of
inquiry, and the editor’s venerable and honoured friend, though now
grown old in the service of science and literature, has entered into the
subject with a cordiality and ardour, commensurate with the puzzling
nature of the subject.

But first with respect to the claim on behalf of Magalhaéns, as based
upon the map of Vaz Dourado. The following are extracts from Dr.
Martin’s reports upon the map.

  “On inspecting the map and examining the more southern regions, I
  found that the island of Timor was the most southern land laid down
  in lat. 10° S., which is its true situation; while further to the
  south all was blank, excepting certain ornamental devices as far as
  about latitude 17° or 18°, which was the lowest margin of the map.
  To the west and east the map was bordered by a scale of latitude, in
  single degrees; but this map did not occupy the whole sheet of
  vellum, for to the right of the eastern scale of latitude something
  else was laid down, viz., a line of coast running with a little
  southing from west to east, with many rivers and names of places
  upon it, and this notice underneath, ‘Esta Costa Descubrió Fernaō de
  Magalhāes naturall portuges pormandado do emperador Carllos o anno
  1520.’

  “If the whole sheet is meant to constitute one map and referable to
  the same scale of latitude, then the coast in question is not where
  New Holland ought to be, being north of Timor and much too far to
  the eastward. On turning over to the next sheet (in the atlas) there
  is a similar line of coast laid down with precisely the same notice
  (above quoted) at the bottom, and evidently a _continuation_ of the
  same coast and upon the same scale. I send a list of the names,
  which I have made out as well as I could, for they are very small
  and several letters are not very clear.

  “The reasons why I cannot consider this coast as part of New
  Holland, are, 1st. It is at least one thousand five hundred miles in
  length, and nearly straight as a whole, though indented in its
  parts; 2ndly. That it is represented to have numerous rivers, which
  are very rare in New Holland (on the coast); 3rdly. That it is
  considerably distant from its true place to the south of Timor,
  which in the atlas is laid down correctly as to latitude, although,
  4thly. There is plenty of room for it on the map. I have thought it
  might be part of the coast of South America, where Magelhaens was
  long detained, and that it is put down as a sort of memorandum of
  the great extent of coast which he discovered in the first
  circumnavigation of the globe. With indomitable perseverance he
  pushed his way through the straits that bear his name into the
  Pacific, and in this vast ocean he sailed about for three months and
  twenty days (says Pigafetta, who accompanied him and wrote an
  account of the voyage) without discovering anything excepting two
  small desert islands, until he arrived at the Phillippines. Had he
  really discovered so much of the coast of a great southern
  continent, Spain, in whose service he was, might well have boasted
  of the feat, and Portugal, whose native he was, might have defended
  the claims of the man who performed it, and not let so bold and
  noble a discovery (for those times) remain so long in doubt.

  “Now with respect to America: if we examine carefully the list of
  names upon this line of coast, we shall find some that have a
  resemblance to those on the coast of America, along which Magelhaens
  pursued his course. One of these, C. de las Virgines, is found in
  some maps just at the entrance of the Straits of Magellan, on the
  eastern side. I do not see any name like Fromose,[4] but there is
  the name Gaia Fromosa, in or near the Straits of Magellan (in the
  same atlas). In the enclosed list of names we have also Terra de
  Gigätes or Terra de Gigantes, and may not this be the Patagonians?

  “On a closer and more minute examination of Dourado’s map, and
  others, I think it may now be made evident that the coast said to
  have been discovered by Magalhaéns, in 1520, and mistaken by Sa de
  Bandeira and others, for part of the coast of New Holland, is no
  other than the northern coast of New Guinea.

  “Now New Guinea, or part of it, as laid down by Dourado, appears
  under the name of Os Papuos, and extends to the eastward as far as
  the scale of latitude is marked, but beyond that scale there is
  about half an inch of space, and there the coast in question
  commences, and runs a long way towards the east, with a little
  southing, and has many islands bordering upon it; whether this be
  either a continuation or a repetition more extended of Papua, it is
  much in the same latitude, and runs in the same direction. Again, on
  referring to an old map of Mercator, I found some names upon New
  Guinea, similar to those on the coast in question; there I found C.
  de las Virgines; I. de los Cresbos; R. de Bolcados; Buen Puerto,
  answering to C. de las Virgines; I. de los Crespos: Bullcones Puerto
  Bueno, as found among the names on the coast in question; but what
  places the matter still more beyond a doubt is, that the names in
  both run in the same consecutive order from west to east, upon
  several of the islands which border the main land.

 Names of Islands as laid down in    Names of Islands as laid down in
 Dourado’s map along the coast said  Mercator’s map on the coast of New
 to be New Holland, in consecutive   Guinea, in consecutive order from
 order from W. to E.                 W. to E.

 I. de los Martiles                  Y. de los Martyres
 I. dellos Crespos                   Y. de Crespos
 I. Duarati                          Y. Dearti
 I. de Armo                          No such name
 I. de Malagrate                     Y. de Malagente
 I. Dombres brancos                  Y. de Hombres brancos
 Llabasbuda                          La barbade
 Llacuimana                          No such name
 Bullcones (is laid down on the main Los Bulcones.
   land)

  “Seeing then that the coast in question, and that of New Guinea are
  in the same latitude, that they greatly resemble each other in
  position, that several names upon them are similar, and that the
  similar names follow each other in both cases in the like
  consecutive order, and the same direction from west to east, I think
  we may safely come to the conclusion that the coast in question is
  identically that of New Guinea, and that the assumption of Viscount
  Sa de Bandeira and others following him, or whom he has followed, is
  an error.”

From these observations of Dr. Martin, the editor forms the following
conclusions; that the tract laid down on Vaz Dourado’s map as discovered
by Magalhaens, is in fact a memorandum or cartographical side-note of
the real discovery by Magalhaens of Terra del Fuego, and that from its
adopted false position on the vellum it was subsequently applied
erroneously to New Guinea by Mercator. But even if this surmise be
incorrect, the only alternative that remains is that the tract laid down
is New Guinea, and clearly not Australia, as assumed by the claimants to
whom we have referred. The editor submits that this claim is alike
untenable from the account of Magalhaens’ voyage and from the evidence
of the map itself on which that claim is founded.

[Illustration: IAVE LA GRANDE]

But we now pass to a more plausible indication of a discovery of
Australia by the Portuguese in the early part of the sixteenth century,
which ranges between the years of 1512 and 1542. It occurs in similar
form on six maps, four of them in England and two in France, on which,
immediately below Java, and separated from that island only by a narrow
strait, is drawn a large country stretching southward to the verge of
the several maps. The earliest in all probability, and the most fully
detailed of these maps, is the one from which we give the annexed
reduction of that portion immediately under consideration. It is a large
chart of the world, on a plane scale, on vellum, 8 ft. 2 in. by 3 ft. 10
in., highly ornamented, with figures, etc., and with the names in
French. At the upper corner, on the left hand, is a shield of the arms
of France, with the collar of St. Michael; and on the right, another
shield of France and Dauphiny, quarterly. It was probably executed in
the time of Francis I. of France, for his son the Dauphin, afterwards
Henry II. This chart formerly belonged to Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford,
after whose death it was taken away by one of his servants. It was
subsequently purchased by Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., and presented by him
to the British Museum in 1790.

The second, in all probability, of these, is contained in an atlas drawn
at Dieppe in 1547, at present in the possession of Sir Thomas Phillipps,
Bart., of Middle Hill, Worcestershire. It contains the name of Nicholas
Vallard, of Dieppe. The editor has been unsuccessful in his efforts to
gain a sight of this atlas, or even of a fac-simile lithograph made by
Sir Thomas Phillipps of the map supposed to contain the representation
of Australia. Hence he has been compelled to rely upon the memory of Sir
Frederick Madden, who had an opportunity of examining the atlas some
years since, and who recollects that though it bore the name of Vallard
and the date of 1547, it was not made by him, and that its date, though
probably earlier than 1547, could be shown from internal evidence to be
not earlier than 1539. A coat of arms appears in the margin of the
volume, _argent_, on a saltire, _gules_, five besants, a mullet,
_sable_, in the fess point. This may lead a future investigator to the
discovery of an earlier possessor of the map than Vallard, although it
should be remarked that the borders on the margin appear to be of a
later date than the maps themselves. It fell into the possession of
Prince Talleyrand at the beginning of this century, and attracting the
attention of the celebrated geographer M. Barbié du Bocage, drew from
him a notice in the _Magasin Encyclopédique_, _douzième année_, tom. iv,
107, which, though lengthy, bears so directly upon the subject of the
present work, that it is proposed in simple justice both to the writer
and the reader, presently to give it in full.

[Illustration: The Londe of Java]

The third and fourth of these maps (if our other inferences as to date
be correct) are contained in one volume in the British Museum; one of
them is a detailed map, and the other an almost skeleton map of the
world in hemispheres, with the latitudes and longitudes marked, and the
names of “the lytel Java” and “the londe of Java” laid down on the great
country in question. It is from this latter map that the annexed extract
is given, on the same scale as the original, the octavo page being
sufficiently large to admit the portion required to be shown. The only
point of difference calling for special remark is, that in the original
hemisphere the line representing the eastern coast does not reach to the
bottom of the map, but terminates abruptly in the same degree of
latitude as represented in the copy, though that degree is here, for
convenience sake, made to coincide with the margin of the map. Indeed
the special interest of this particular map is, that whereas all the
others which represent this remarkable country have the coast line
extended indefinitely to the southern margin; on this both the eastern
and western coast lines stop abruptly at certain points, of which we are
able to take cognizance by the degrees of latitude being shown on the
same map. The volume containing these two important maps bears the date
of 1542, and was made by one Jean Rotz, who had in the first instance
intended to dedicate it to the king of France, but afterwards presented
it to king Henry VIII of England. In this dedication to the king, he
says that the maps are made “au plus certain et vray quil ma esté
possible de faire, tant par mon experience propre, que par la certaine
experience de mes amys et compagnons navigateurs;” and at the close, he
expresses his hope to compose shortly a work in English, which was to be
printed, to the great profit and advantage of all the navigators and
seamen of this prosperous kingdom. It is to be regretted that we do not
possess the work here promised, as much light might thereby have been
thrown upon the mystery in which the question before us is involved. It
has been suggested by Malte Brun, that the author was a Fleming, who
came over to England with Anne of Cleves in 1540. The idea may have
originated in the form of the name, but would hardly have been
maintained had Malte Brun read Rotz’s dedication, in which he speaks of
the king of France as having been “mon souverin et naturel signeur.”
There can be no doubt, then, that he was a French subject.

The fifth in date, if we suppose it to have been made early in the reign
of Henry II, is a map given in fac-simile by M. Jomard, in his
_Monuments de la Géographie, ou Recueil d’Anciennes Cartes_, now in
progress, and is described by him as “Mappemonde peinte sur parchemin
par ordre de Henri II, Roi de France.”

The sixth is a map in a Portolano at the Depôt de la Guerre, Paris,
drawn in 1555 by Guillaume le Testu, a pilot of Grasse, in Provence, or
as others have thought a Norman. André Thevet, cosmographer to Henry II,
boasts of having often sailed with him, and always styles him as
“renommé pilote et singulier navigateur.” The map was drawn for Admiral
Coligny, to whom it is dedicated and whose name it bears. The editor has
succeeded in procuring a tracing of that portion which affects the
present question, and finds it to agree with the other maps of the kind
in the delineation of the coast of “la Grande Java.”

On the reduced tracing of the most fully detailed of these maps given at
p. xxvii, are inscribed some names of bays and coasts which were noticed
in the first instance by Alexander Dalrymple, the late hydrographer to
the Admiralty and East India Company, to bear a resemblance to the names
given by Captain Cook to parts of New Holland which he had himself
discovered.

In his memoir concerning the Chagos and adjacent islands, 1786, p. 4,
speaking of this map he says:—“The east coast of New Holland, as we name
it, is expressed with some curious circumstances of correspondence to
Captain Cook’s MS. What he names

      Bay of Inlets, is in the MS. called Bay Perdue.
      Bay of Isles                        R. de beaucoup d’Isles.
      Where the Endeavour struck          Coste dangereuse.

So that we may say with Solomon, ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’”

To the discredit of so well informed and laborious a man as Dalrymple,
to whom, perhaps, next to Hakluyt, this country is the most largely
indebted for its commercial prosperity, this passage was but an
invidious insinuation, intended to disparage the credit of Captain Cook,
of whose appointment to the command of the _Endeavour_ he was extremely
jealous. Dalrymple had earnestly desired the command of an expedition to
discover the great southern continent, the existence of which he had
endeavoured to prove by various philosophical arguments, which later
times have shown to be not without foundation; and his observation would
seem to imply that Cook, who had been so successful in his discoveries
on the coast of New Holland, might have been led thereto by an
acquaintance with this pre-existent map. The unworthy insinuation met
with a sensible refutation, we are happy to record, from the pen of a
Frenchman, M. Frederic Metz, in a paper printed at p. 261, vol. 47, of
_La Revue, ou Decade Philosophique, Littéraire et Politique_, Nov.,
1805. For the sake of clearness, the editor avoids here giving the whole
of M. Metz’s paper, in which an attempt is made to disprove that New
Holland was discovered at this time by the Portuguese at all, but will
merely quote those passages which meet Dalrymple’s insinuation. M. Metz
says:—

  “It had been generally believed that we were indebted to the Dutch
  for our acquaintance with this vast country, and that the celebrated
  Cook had in his first voyage discovered its eastern coast, which he
  named New South Wales, until the discovery was made in the British
  Museum of a map upon parchment, presumed to be of the sixteenth
  century, on which was observed a large country laid down on the site
  occupied by New Holland. On the eastern coast of this country places
  were found with the names ‘Côte des Herbaiges,’ ‘Rivière de beaucoup
  d’Iles,’ ‘Côte dangereuse,’ names which present a great resemblance
  to those of ‘Botany Bay,’ ‘Bay of Islands,’ and ‘Dangerous Coast,’
  given by Cook to parts of New South Wales.

  “The resemblance of these names struck many persons. Mr. Dalrymple,
  a man of the greatest merit, but a personal enemy of Cook, whom he
  never forgave for having received, in preference to him, the command
  of the _Endeavour_, in the voyage made to observe the passage of
  Venus, and especially for having demolished, beyond of hope of
  recovery, his theories of the existence of the southern lands, and
  of the north-west passage of America: Mr. Dalrymple, I say, took
  occasion therefrom to insinuate in one of his works, that the
  discovery of the east of New Holland was due to some navigator of
  the sixteenth century, and that Cook had only followed in his
  track....

  “As to the resemblance of the names—this seems to me to prove
  exactly the contrary of the conclusions which it has been attempted
  to draw from them. If Cook had been acquainted with the maps in
  question, and had wished to appropriate to himself the discoveries
  of another, will any one suppose him so short-sighted as to have
  preserved for his discoveries the very names which would have
  exposed his plagiarism, if ever the sources which he had consulted
  came to be known. The ‘dangerous coast’ was so named because there
  he found himself during four hours in imminent danger of shipwreck.
  We must suppose, then, that he exposed himself and his crew to an
  almost certain death in order to have a plausible excuse for
  applying a name similar to that which this coast had already
  received from the unknown and anonymous navigator who had previously
  discovered it. Moreover, names such as ‘Bay of Islands,’ ‘Dangerous
  coast,’ are well known in geography. We find a Bay of Islands in New
  Holland; and on the east coast of the island of Borneo there is a
  ‘Côte des Herbages.’”

The sound sense of this reasoning, apart from all question of honour on
the part of a man of the high character of Captain Cook, would seem
conclusive, yet this similarity of the names has, to the editor’s own
knowledge, been remarked upon by persons of high standing and
intelligence in this country, though without any intention of
disparaging Captain Cook, as an evidence that this country was identical
with Australia. The similarity of the expression, “Côte des Herbages,”
with the name of Botany Bay, given to a corresponding part of the coast
by Captain Cook, has been particularly dwelt upon, whereas it ought to
be known that this bay, originally called Stingray, but afterwards
Botany Bay, was not so named on account of the fertility of the soil,
but from the variety of plants new to the science of botany which were
discovered on a soil otherwise rather unpromising. It is plain that
early navigators would assign such a designation as “Côte des Herbages”
to a shore remarkable for its rich growth of grass or other vegetation,
rather than from the appreciation of any curious botanical discovery.
Had the similarity of the names “Rivière de beaucoup d’Isles” and “Côte
dangereuse” with Cook’s “Bay of Isles” and the place “where the
_Endeavour_ struck,” names descriptive of unquestionable realities, been
advanced by Dalrymple as evidence of the high probability that the
country represented on the early map was New Holland, without
volunteering an insinuation against the merit of his rival, we should
have accepted the reasonable suggestion with deference and just
acquiescence.

That New Holland was the country thus represented, became an argument
supported by a variety of reasonings by more than one of our French
neighbours. Mr. Coquebert Montbret, in a memoir printed in No. 81 of the
_Bulletin des Sciences_, 1804, quotes Dalrymple’s injurious observation,
and silently allows it to have its deceptive effect on the mind of the
incautious reader.

The atlas now in the possession of Sir Thomas Phillipps, which, as we
have stated, is probably next in date to that made for the Dauphin, fell
into the possession of Prince Talleyrand at the beginning of this
century, and attracting the attention of the celebrated geographer M.
Barbié du Bocage, drew from him the following notice in the _Magasin
Encyclopédique_, _douzième année_, tom. iv, 1807, which, though lengthy,
bears so directly upon the subject of the present work, that it is here
given in full.

    _Extract from the notice of a geographical manuscript belonging to
      his Serene Highness the Prince of Benevento_ [better known as
      the Prince Talleyrand], _read at a Public Session of the
      Institute, on the 3rd of July, 1807, by M. Barbié du Bocage._

  This manuscript is an hydrographic atlas, drawn at Dieppe in 1547,
  by a person of the name of Nicholas Vallard, of Dieppe, representing
  the eastern and western coasts of the continent of New Holland. This
  atlas is not the only one upon which these coasts are laid down.
  There are two in England, which came from France, and which we have
  been made acquainted with by the English as well as by some
  Frenchmen. One of the two, which has been for a considerable time in
  the library of the British Museum, was drawn in 1542 by a person of
  the name of Jean Rotz or Roty, who had in the first instance drawn
  it, as he states in the dedication, for the king of France, but
  afterwards presented it to Henry VIII, king of England. The second
  is a large map on one single sheet of parchment, made for the
  Dauphin of France, whose arms it bears. It was formerly in the
  library of the earl of Oxford, where Sir Joseph Banks was acquainted
  with it, and thence it passed to the British Museum, where it is at
  present. The English pretend that none of these charts were
  discovered till after the death of the celebrated Captain Cook, and
  that they had no knowledge of them when this navigator set sail. But
  their prior existence in well-known libraries in England may cause
  this assertion to be doubted. But even if they had made use of them
  to indicate to their countryman the countries which he had to visit,
  it would not the less follow that the skill, the prudence, and the
  resolution with which Captain Cook conducted his operations must
  always secure for him the glory of having made known in detail the
  countries which had hitherto been but faintly indicated.

  The third manuscript atlas which represents the coasts of New
  Holland, is that of which we have now to treat. It is a small folio
  volume, consisting of fifteen hydrographical charts, on vellum,
  which has been recently acquired by his serene highness the Prince
  of Benevento. This atlas, even by the account of persons who have
  seen those which are in England, is the most beautiful of all the
  works of the kind, and for this reason deserves the most particular
  attention. There has since been discovered in France a fourth, which
  is at present in the library of the Dépôt de la Guerre, which was
  drawn in 1555 by a person named Guillaume le Testu, a pilot, of
  Grasse, in Provence, for Admiral Coligny, to whom it is dedicated,
  and whose arms it bears.

  The English geographers, MM. Dalrymple, Major Rennell, and
  Pinkerton; and among the French, MM. Buache, De la Rochette,
  Coquebert de Montbret, and others, recognize on these atlases the
  eastern and western coasts of New Holland. These coasts are bounded
  by the same latitudes as those indicated on recent maps; and if they
  encroach more on longitude it is because, at the time the discovery
  was made, there existed but small means of fixing the boundaries in
  that respect. The names on all the atlases which we have just
  quoted, are, for the most part, in Portuguese, some of them in
  French; that of 1542 alone, which is in England, has some of the
  names in bad English. We must, therefore, come to the conclusion
  that these atlases have been copied from Portuguese maps, and
  consequently that the discovery of the continent of New Holland
  belongs to the Portuguese. This is the opinion of MM. Dalrymple,
  Pinkerton, De la Rochette, and several others; and I do not believe
  that any good reason can be alleged in refutation of an opinion so
  well founded.

  All these atlases call this continent “Great Java”, in
  contradistinction to the island of Java, which is to the north of
  it; yet it is very singular that no mention whatever is made of this
  country in the voyages of the time. As, however, I think I have
  detected from history the period at which it must have been made, I
  shall now endeavour to explain why the Portuguese have kept this
  discovery a secret. I shall then fix the period at which I presume
  it to have been made, and will shew how the knowledge of this
  country has been lost even by those who have discovered it.

  The most ancient of the atlases which represent the coasts of New
  Holland, is that of Rotz or Roty, which is in England, and which
  bears the date of 1542. The discovery of New Holland, therefore, is
  anterior to the year 1542. At that period the Portuguese were
  masters of the Molucca Islands, which they had discovered in 1511,
  and where they had established themselves in 1512, and in one of
  which, Ternate, they had built a fort in 1522. They must have
  discovered New Holland after the Moluccas, and therefore this
  discovery must be limited to the period between the years 1512 and
  1542.

  Now, after 1516 or 1517, Spain began to dispute with Portugal the
  possession of the Moluccas, as being situated within the hemisphere
  which had been allotted to them by the bull of pope Alexander VI,
  dated the 4th of July, 1493. This pope, in consequence of the
  disputes which had arisen between the courts of Lisbon and Toledo,
  had arranged that all the discoveries which might be made on the
  globe to the east of a meridian one hundred leagues west of the
  Azores and Cape Verde Islands (which he seemed to think lay under
  the same meridian), for the space of a hundred and eighty degrees of
  longitude, should belong to the Portuguese; and that those to the
  westward of the same meridian, for the same space, should belong to
  the Spaniards. This division has been since called the line of
  demarcation of Pope Alexander VI. Don John II, however, who was then
  king of Portugal, being dissatisfied with this bull, which seemed to
  deprive him of considerable possessions in the west, made another
  arrangement in the following year with Isabella and Ferdinand of
  Spain, by which this line was pushed further west, and definitely
  fixed at three hundred and seventy leagues to the westward of the
  Cape Verde Islands. This agreement was signed the 4th of June, 1494;
  and it was arranged that, in the space of ten months, persons should
  be sent out who were well informed in geography, to fix exactly the
  places through which this line should pass.

  This engagement once entered upon, no more consideration was given
  to the sending out competent persons to the places indicated, and
  the two governments continued their discoveries, each on its own
  behalf. Under the guidance of Cabral, the Portuguese, on the 9th of
  March, 1500, discovered Brazil, which lay in their own hemisphere.
  Under the guidance of Vincent Yanez Pinzon, the Spaniards had in
  this same or preceding year, sailed along the whole of this coast as
  far as the embouchure of the Oronoco. After this time the line,
  without further examination, was reckoned to pass by the mouth of
  the Marañon, or river of the Amazons, which had been already
  explored, and it is in this part that it is found traced on the
  Spanish maps of Herrera. The Portuguese, while they took possession
  of Brazil, continued their discoveries towards the east, and reached
  the Moluccas, where they established themselves, as we have said, in
  1512. The proprietorship of the spices which the possession of these
  islands gave them, produced such considerable profits, that it soon
  excited the jealousy of the Spaniards. The latter pretended that the
  Moluccas were in the hemisphere which had been allotted to them.
  This idea was particularly suggested to them by Magellan, who, being
  discontented with the treatment of king Emanuel, in having refused
  him an increase of allowance, took refuge about the year 1516 in
  Spain, and offered his services to the government of Charles V. Not
  only did he assert that the hemisphere belonging to the Spaniards
  comprised the Moluccas, but also the islands of Java and Sumatra,
  and a part of the Malay peninsula. In fact, from the difficulty
  which then existed in determining longitudes, the discoveries of the
  Portuguese appeared to appropriate more than one hundred and eighty
  degrees in this direction, so great was the amount of space given to
  them in their maps: nevertheless, if we examine modern maps we shall
  see that, measuring from the mouth of the Marañon, the Moluccas
  still came within the hemisphere of the Portuguese.

  Cardinal Ximenes, who at that time governed Spain in the absence of
  Charles V., at the outset received Magellan very well, and Charles
  V. himself afterwards entrusted him with the command of a squadron
  of five vessels, which, as we know, sailed from San Lucar on the
  20th of September, 1519, on a western passage in search of the Spice
  Islands or Moluccas. Two of the vessels of this fleet arrived on the
  8th of November, 1521, at the island of Tidore, after having passed
  through the straits since called the Straits of Magellan. That
  navigator was now no more; he had been killed in one of the islands
  of the archipelago of St. Lazaro, since called the Philippines, and
  nearly all his squadron having been destroyed, one vessel only,
  named the _Victoria_, returned to Europe, with eighteen persons, all
  very sick, under the guidance of Sebastian del Cano, who landed on
  the 6th of September, 1522, at the same port of San Lucar de
  Barrameda, from which the fleet had set sail three years before.

  Whether it was from policy, or because the currents which exist in
  the Great Pacific Ocean had carried Magellan’s fleet rapidly down to
  the Philippines and Moluccas, those who returned from this
  expedition always maintained that these latter islands were in the
  hemisphere of the Spaniards, who consequently laid claim to traffic
  there. They were even on the point of sending out a new expedition
  thither, when king John III begged Charles V to have the question
  examined by competent persons, and promised to acquiesce in their
  decision. The two governments appointed twenty-four, or even a
  greater number, both Spaniards and Portuguese, well skilled in
  geography and navigation, who from the commencement of March 1524,
  met alternately in the two cities of Badajos and Elvas, on the
  frontiers of the two states. Three months were allowed them to
  decide definitely to whom these islands belonged.

  These commissioners, among whom was Sebastian del Cano, who had
  brought back the _Victoria_, consumed at the outset a considerable
  time in consulting globes and charts, and in comparing the journals
  of pilots. They examined the distance between the Moluccas and the
  line of demarcation. They disputed much, and came to no conclusion.
  More than two months passed away in this manner; and they reached
  the latter part of May, which had been fixed as the term of the
  conferences.

  The Spanish commissioners then settled the line of demarcation at
  three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, as
  it had been fixed in 1494; and as, on the basis of the charts which
  they had then before them, they made the opposite line, which was to
  be at the distance of a hundred and eighty degrees, pass through the
  Malay peninsula, they included in their own hemisphere not only the
  Moluccas, but also the islands of Java and Borneo, part of Sumatra,
  the coast of China, and part of the Malay peninsula itself. The
  Portuguese did not agree to this limitation, which was too
  disadvantageous for themselves; on the contrary, they went away very
  discontented, storming, and threatning war, which gave occasion to
  the jocose observation of Peter Martyr of Anghiera, a talented man,
  at that time the historiographer of the court of Spain, that the
  commissioners, after having well syllogized, concluded by being
  unable to decide the question except by cannon balls.

  In spite of the unsuccessful issue of this negociation, the two
  courts did not come to a quarrel; they were on the point of forming
  alliances. The question of the marriage of the Infanta Catherine,
  the emperor’s sister, with king John, which was celebrated in 1525,
  was being then entertained. In the following year, 1526, the emperor
  espoused, with great pomp, Isabella, king John’s sister. Charles V,
  however, believing himself in the right, continued to permit his
  subjects to carry on commerce with the Spice Islands; and he himself
  fitted out fleets to dispute the possession of them with the
  Portuguese. Some of these vessels landed at the Moluccas in 1527 and
  1528; but, as these expeditions were generally unsuccessful, and as,
  moreover, he was in need of money for his coronation in Italy, he
  listened to the proposals of king John to purchase his right to
  these islands. He parted with them by a secret treaty, which was
  signed at Saragossa the 22nd of April, 1529, for the sum, it is
  said, of 350,000 golden ducats, against the expressed wish of his
  subjects, who often, but in vain, besought him to retract it. By his
  refusal, it was thought that he had received much more. Thenceforth
  the Spaniards were not permitted to traffic with the Moluccas.

  This termination of the quarrel on the part of Portugal was a
  justification of the claims of the Spaniards, and an acknowledgment
  in some sort that the Moluccas were in their hemisphere. After such
  an arrangement, the Portuguese could not show any discoveries made
  to the eastward, or even under the meridian of these islands. The
  greatest part of New Holland is more to the east than the Moluccas;
  hence it is to be believed that for this reason the Portuguese have
  kept silence respecting their discovery of it.

  This discovery, as we have said, must be comprised between the years
  1512 and 1542. There is, however, no mention made of it in the
  voyages of the time, which would sufficiently prove that the
  Portuguese had suppressed, or at least concealed, the account of it.
  But I propose to endeavour to supply this defect from the narrative
  of two of their historians.

  Castanheda, a Portuguese author, who had been in India, tells us
  that in the beginning of July, 1525, the Portuguese of Ternate, one
  of the Moluccas, dispatched a vessel to the island of Celebes to
  traffic there; that this vessel on its return was driven by violent
  winds and currents into an open sea, between the Straits of Magellan
  and the Moluccas; that the Portuguese found themselves thrown more
  than three hundred leagues out of their route, and were several
  times nearly lost. One night their rudder was carried away, and they
  beat about till the morning, when they discovered an island thirty
  leagues in circumference, on which they landed, with thanks to God
  for affording them this asylum. The islanders gave them an excellent
  reception; they were of a tawny colour, but well made and good
  looking, both men and women. The men had long black beards. The
  Portuguese remained four months in this island, not only for the
  purpose of refitting, but because the winds were contrary for the
  return to the Moluccas. At length they departed, and reached Ternate
  on the 20th of January, 1526.

  Such is the narrative of Castanheda. The Jesuit Maffei, who has
  given us a history of India, has supplied us with less details, but
  his account is not less valuable, inasmuch as he gives us the name
  of the captain who commanded the ship. He says: Some Portuguese of
  the Moluccas, having gone to the islands of Celebes to seek for
  gold, but not having been able to land, were driven by a fearful
  tempest upon an island, which is distant therefrom three hundred
  leagues, when they went ashore. The inhabitants, who were simple
  people, received them very well, and soon became familiar with them.
  They comprehended their signs, and even understood a little of the
  language spoken at the Moluccas. All the inhabitants were
  well-looking, both male and female; they were cheerful, and the men
  wore beards and long hair. The existence of this island was
  previously unknown, but in consideration of the account given of it
  by the captain, whose name was Gomez de Sequeira, and of the map
  which he drew of this island, his name was given to it.

  From the details supplied to us by these two authors, it is evident
  that the island on which Gomez de Sequeira was thrown was to the
  eastward of the Moluccas, because, in returning, the Portuguese had
  to sail westward. Now three hundred Portuguese leagues, starting
  from the Moluccas or the island of Celebes, lead us to within a
  trifle of Endeavour Straits; we may therefore conclude that it was
  upon one of the rocks in this strait that Gomez de Sequeira lost his
  rudder, and that the island on which he landed was one of the
  westernmost of those which lie along its western extremity. The
  Portuguese did not advance far into this strait, for it is plain
  that they met with no obstacle in returning to the Moluccas. I
  think, therefore, that the island on which Gomez de Sequeira landed
  was one of those which were called Prince of Wales’s Islands by
  Captain Cook, and which are inhabited, because this navigator states
  that he saw smoke there. What confirms me in this opinion, is the
  agreement of our two authors in stating that the men of Gomez de
  Sequeira’s Island had long and black hair and beards. We still find
  this characteristic distinguishing the natives of New Holland from
  those of New Guinea, whose hair and beards are crisped. This island,
  therefore, was nearer to New Holland than to New Guinea, which is,
  in fact, the case with the Prince of Wales’s Islands.

  The Portuguese having discovered in 1525 an island so near as this
  to New Holland, we must believe that the discovery of that continent
  followed very soon after that of this island. It was at that time
  that the controversies between the courts of Portugal and Spain were
  at their highest; the Portuguese, therefore, needed to be cautious
  respecting their new discoveries; they were obliged to conceal them
  carefully. It will not, therefore, be surprising that no mention was
  made in their works of the discovery of New Holland.

  But, after having shown how much importance the Portuguese must have
  attached to the concealment of their discoveries, and having
  examined at what period the discovery of New Holland may have been
  made, it will be not less interesting to inquire how this discovery
  may have become known in France, and afterwards in England, so early
  as 1542. There was nothing at that time to induce the court of
  Portugal to disclose their discoveries to the court of France; there
  was nothing to bind these two courts in intimate union; on the
  contrary, their intercourse had for some time been rather cool. As a
  proof of this, the king of Portugal had in 1543 married his daughter
  Mary to Philip the Infant of Spain, without giving notice thereof to
  Francis I, who thereupon showed his vexation in his conduct towards
  Francis de Norough, the ambassador of Portugal, who, to avoid a
  rupture between the two courts, answered with considerable reserve.
  We cannot, therefore, presume that the court of Portugal would ever
  have frankly communicated its discoveries to the court of France.

  For my part, if it is permitted me to offer a conjecture, I think
  that this information may have resulted from the faithlessness of
  Don Miguel de Sylva, bishop of Viseo, and secretary of La Purité, a
  favourite of the king of Portugal, who, according to De la Clede,
  left the kingdom about 1542, carrying with him some papers of
  importance with which the king had intrusted him.[5] This historian
  adds, that Don John was so indignant at the treachery of his
  favourite, that he outlawed him by a public decree, deprived him of
  all his benefices, and degraded him from his nobility. He decreed
  the same penalties against all his followers, and forbad all his
  subjects to hold any intercourse whatever with him, under pain of
  his displeasure. The count of Portalegre, the brother of the
  fugitive, was even confined as prisoner in the tower of Belem for
  having written to him, and kept under strict guard, until the
  Infanta Maria, on the point of her departure to marry Philip II, the
  son of the emperor Charles V, begged his liberation. The king
  granted the request, on condition that the count should go to
  Arzilla to fight against the Moors, and earn by his services the
  forgiveness of his fault.

  The severity which the king Don John exhibited on this occasion,
  sufficiently shows the value which he attached to the papers which
  had been taken away. It is evident that they were of the greatest
  importance. They were secret papers; and may they not have been
  those which gave information of the discoveries of the Portuguese?
  Our atlases, therefore, may have been copied from these stolen
  documents; and it only remains for us to discover what has become of
  the originals.

Now, although the theories to which these maps have given rise have been
so complacently accepted by successive geographical writers, the subject
has never yet been minutely investigated by any English writer, nor,
indeed, have the foregoing arguments of the French been ever before
brought together into a focus. The editor, therefore, first proposes to
answer the hypothesis of M. Barbié du Bocage respecting the voyage he
adduces of Gomez de Sequeira, and then, finally, to deal with the
general question of the suggestive evidence of the maps.

With respect to Gomez de Sequeira’s voyage, it is certainly surprising
that M. Barbié du Bocage should have contented himself with referring to
Castanheda and Maffei for a slight and loose description of this voyage,
when it was equally competent to him to have resorted to the more ample
description of Barros, the most distinguished of all the early
Portuguese historians, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century,
and who has devoted a whole chapter to the minute description of the
voyage in question. (See Dec. 3, liv. x, cap. 5.) So full and ample is
Barros’ narrative that, with a modern map before us, we can track
Sequeira’s course with a nicety which, so far as the main question is
concerned, is not interrupted even by the accidents of the storm and the
unshipping of his rudder. Let the reader for a moment consult any modern
map of the Moluccas and neighbouring islands, and he will find that the
island of Celebes, to which Sequeira directed his course from Ternate,
presents the northernmost of the three horns of its oddly-shaped outline
at a distance of about sixty leagues from Ternate. This is the distance
which Barros states that he had to sail in order to reach that island.
Had he sailed to the nearest of the two other points his voyage would
have been, instead of sixty leagues, more than twice that distance;
whereas the very nearness of the island was a leading inducement for
undertaking the voyage, as the object was to relieve the immediate
necessities of the settlement at Ternate. Upon landing at the point thus
shown to be the northernmost one, the fact of his having carried with
him stuffs for barter being discovered by the natives, converted the
friendly feeling with which they had at first received him into
hostility, as, having heard of some previous acts of greediness on the
part of the Portuguese, they immediately concluded that the visit was
not made in a spirit of friendship, but from selfish and ulterior
motives. Hence Sequeira and his party were compelled to make their
escape in haste, and proceeded to four or five other small islands in
the neighbourhood, at which they met with a like reception. The map will
show these plainly to the north of Celebes. Resolving after these
rebuffs to return to Ternate, they encountered a terrific storm, which
drove them, to the best of their calculation, three hundred leagues,
_into an open sea_, with not a single island in sight, _but constantly
towards the east_. At length one night they struck upon an island and
unshipped their rudder. They met with a most friendly reception from the
natives, who are described as of a light, rather than a dark, colour,
and clothed. The island is stated to have been large, and the natives
pointed to a mountain to the westward in which they said there was gold.
The Portuguese remained in the island four months, until the monsoon
enabled them to return to Ternate.

Now, had Sequeira been driven by the storm towards Endeavour Strait, as
presumed by M. Barbié du Bocage, a glance at the map will show us that
his course would have been south-east instead of east, and that not
through an open sea in which no island could be seen, but one bestudded
with islands. In fact, so definite is the whole account as given in
detail by Barros, that, as we have shown, his course under the driving
of the tempest may be palpably traced in accordance therewith on modern
maps as due east to the north of the Moluccas, and through an open sea,
and is clearly at variance with the inference of M. Barbié du Bocage,
who seems not to have consulted Barros at all upon the subject. To what
island, the reader will ask, was Sequeira driven? Let the modern map be
consulted, and the course described will bring us to the island Tobi,
otherwise known as Lord North’s Island. A course so clearly defined is
in itself a very strong point in the question, even though we may have
to show some discrepancies between the description of the island on
which Sequeira was thrown and that which we have in recent times
received of Lord North’s Island. Let the reader, however, in connexion
with Barros’ description of the course, take the following remarkable
statement, as quoted in the 6th volume of the _Ethnography and Philology
of the United States Exploring Expedition_, by H. Hale, in which, under
the article “Tobi, or Lord North’s Island,” at p. 78, the following
account is given, and he will perhaps not dissent from the editor in
thinking it possible that this was the island on which Sequeira was
driven.

  “Tobi, or Lord North’s Island, is situated in about lat. 3° 2´ N.,
  and long. 131° 4´ E. It is a small low islet, about three miles in
  circumference, with a population of between three and four hundred
  souls. Our information concerning it is derived from an American, by
  name Horace Holden, who, with eleven companions, after suffering
  shipwreck, reached the island in a boat, and was taken captive by
  the natives. He was detained by them two years, from December 6th,
  1832, to November 27th, 1834, when he made his escape and returned
  to America, where he published in a small volume [which is in the
  British Museum], an interesting narrative of his adventures and
  sufferings, with a description of the island and its inhabitants.

  “The complexion of the natives, says Holden in his narrative, is _a
  light copper colour_, much lighter than that of the Malays or Pelew
  Islanders, which last, however, they resemble in the breadth of
  their faces, high cheek bones, and broad flattened noses. Here we
  observe what has been before remarked of the Polynesian tribes, that
  the lightest complexion is found among those who are nearest the
  equator.

  “According to the native traditions a personage, by name Pita-Ka’t
  (or Peeter Kart),[6] of copper colour like themselves, ‘_Came, many
  years ago, from the Island of Ternate, one of the Moluccas, and gave
  them their religion and such simple arts as they possessed_. It is
  probably to him that we are to attribute some peculiarities in their
  mode of worship, such as their temple, with rude images to represent
  their divinity. The natives wear the Polynesian girdle of barb
  cloth.

  “The houses of the natives are built with small trees and rods, and
  thatched with leaves. They have two stories, a ground floor and a
  loft, which is entered by a hole or scuttle through the horizontal
  partition or upper floor.

  “For ornament they sometimes wear in their ears, which are always
  bored, a folded leaf, and around their necks a necklace made of the
  shell of the cocoa-nut and a small white sea shell.”

With reference to the cruelties detailed in Holden’s narrative, Mr. Hale
goes on to say:

  “It should be mentioned that the release of the four Americans who
  survived (two of whom got free a short time after their capture),
  was voluntary on the part of the natives, a fact which shows that
  the feelings of humanity were not altogether extinct in their
  hearts. Indeed, although the sufferings of the captives were very
  great, it did not appear that they were worse, relatively to the
  condition in which the natives themselves lived, than they would
  have been on any other island of the Pacific. Men who were actually
  dying of starvation, like the people of Tobi, could not be expected
  to exercise that kindness towards others which nature refused to
  them.”

We have quoted this somewhat long passage respecting Lord North’s
Island, as having an incidental interest in connexion with M. Barbié du
Bocage’s argument; but whatever may really have been the island on which
Sequeira was driven, it seems clear that it could not have been in the
direction of Endeavour Strait as inferred by that geographer.

Having thus shown the surmises which have been suggested by geographers
of good repute with respect to the main question of the discovery of
Australia in the early part of the sixteenth century, and explained, as
he hopes satisfactorily, the errors into which they have fallen in their
attempts at explanation, the editor will now lay before the reader his
own reasons for concluding that Australia is the country which these
maps describe.

The first question that will naturally arise is—how far does the country
thus represented, correspond in latitude, longitude, and outline with
the recognized surveys of Australia as delineated in modern maps? And if
the discrepancies exposed by the comparison do not forbid the
supposition that Australia is the country represented on the early maps,
the inquiry will then suggest itself—how, with any satisfactory show of
reason, may these discrepancies be accounted for? To both these
questions, the editor believes that he can give acceptable answers.

And first as respects latitude. In all of these maps, the latitude of
the north of Java, which is the first certain starting point, is
correct. The south coast of Java, or “the lytil Java,” though separated
from “Java la Grande,” or the “Londe of Java,” by a narrow channel, as
shown in the maps here given, has no names which indicate any pretension
to a survey. There is enough proximity between the two to suggest alike
the possibility of a connection or of a separation of the two countries.
In the absence of so many words, the maps show as plainly as possible
that it was as yet an unsettled question. With this fact, therefore,
before us, implying, as it does, both conscientiousness in the
statements on the maps, and the confession of an imperfect survey of the
whole of the coasts supposed to be laid down, we have no difficulty in
giving credence to the pretension that the great southern land there
represented was, with all its errors, a reality and not a fiction. In
all fairness, therefore, we pass the question of junction between the
little and the great Java, as a point virtually declared to be
unsettled, and supposing the latter to be Australia, test our
supposition by inquiring as to the correctness of the latitude in which
the coast line terminates on the western side. Here again we find exact
correctness. In the one (Rotz’s map), the line ceases altogether at 35°,
the real south-western point of Australia, and in the other at the same
point all description ceases, and a meaningless line is drawn to the
margin of the map, implying that no further exploration had been made.
On the eastern side, we have in every respect greater inaccuracy; but
for the present we deal only with the question of latitude. For the sake
of convenience, our reduction of Rotz’s map is made to terminate at the
point where the eastern coast line of “the londe of Java terminates,”
namely in the sixtieth degree, a parallel far exceeding in its southing
even the southernmost point of Tasmania, which is in 43° 35´; but if we
look to the Dauphin map, we find that about ten degrees of the
southernmost portion of the line is indefinite, and it must not be
forgotten that for the Portuguese this was the remotest point for
investigation, and consequently the least likely to be definite. There
is, however, strong reason for supposing that the eastern side of
Tasmania was included within this coast line.

With respect to longitude, it may be advanced that with all the
discrepancies observable in the maps here presented, there is no other
country but Australia lying between the same parallels, and of the same
extent, between the east coast of Africa and the west coast of America,
and that Australia does in reality lie between the same meridians as the
great mass of the country here laid down. In Rotz’s map we have the
longitude reckoned from the Cape Verde islands, the degrees running
eastward from 1 to 360. The extreme western point of “the Londe of Java”
is in about 126° (102 E. from Greenwich), whereas the westernmost point
of Australia is in about 113° E. from Greenwich. The extreme eastern
points of “the Londe of Java” is in about 207° (or 183° E. from
Greenwich). The extreme eastern point however is on a peak of huge
extent, which is a manifest blunder or exaggeration. The longitude of
the easternmost side, excluding this peak, is in about 187° (or 163° E.
from Greenwich), whereas the easternmost point of Australia is in
something less than 154° E. from Greenwich. The difficulty of
ascertaining the longitude in those days is well known, and the
discoveries which these maps represent were, in all probability, made on
a variety of occasions, and had a continuous line given to them on maps,
not so much as an exact, but as an approximative guide to subsequent
explorers. It were hard indeed, therefore, if sufficient concession were
not made to the pioneers of maritime exploration, for the reconciliation
of these comparatively light discrepancies, when inaccuracies as
striking are observable in surveys made as late as in the eighteenth
century.

Thus in taking a general survey of the outline of this immense country,
we have this one striking fact presented to us, that the western side is
comprised between exactly the same parallels as the corresponding side
of Australia, allowance being made for the conjunction of Java, while
the eastern side presents the same characteristic as the eastern side of
Australia in being by far the longest.

We now proceed to a more minute examination of the contour of the
coasts. It is to be observed that on the north of the Great Java, as
shown in all of these manuscript maps which have met the editor’s eye,
occurs the word “Sumbava,”—a fact which, he thinks, has never been
noticed by any writer upon these interesting documents. Here is another
instance of the discovery of the north of an island of which the south
has remained unexplored. The peak of the Great Java, on which this name
“Sumbava” is laid down, falls into the right position of the now
well-known island of Sumbava, with the smaller islands of Bali and
Lombok, lying between it and Java, and with Flores and Timor duly
described to the eastward. The reason of this south coast of these
islands remaining so long unexplored may be found in the description of
Java by Barros, the Portuguese historian, who wrote in the middle of the
sixteenth century. He says: “The natives of Sunda, in dissecting Java,
speak of it as separated by the river Chiamo from the island of Sunda on
the west, and on the east by a strait from the island of Bali; as having
Madura on the north, and on the south an undiscovered sea; and they
think that whoever shall proceed beyond these straits, will be hurried
away by strong currents, so as never to be able to return, and for this
reason they never attempt to navigate it, in the same manner as the
Moors on the eastern coast of Africa do not venture to pass the Cape of
Currents.” The earliest mention that the editor has noticed of a passage
to the south of Java, is in the account of the “Four Hollanders’ Ships’
Voyage, being the First Voyage of the Dutch to the East Indies.” See
_Oxford Collection of Voyages_, vol. ii, p. 417. Under date of the 14th
March, 1597, it is said: “The wind blew still south-east, sometimes more
southward and sometimes eastward, being under 14°, and a good sharp
gale, holding our course west south-west. There we found that Java is
not so broad nor stretcheth itself so much southward as it is set down
in the card; for, if it were, we should have passed clean through the
middle of the land.” Supposing, then, that the Portuguese navigators
have lighted upon the west coast of Australia, and have regarded it as a
possible extension to the southward of the already known island of Java;
let us proceed to test the correctness of this supposition by the
contour of the coast of the western side. A single glance of the eye
will suffice to detect the general resemblance. It is probable that the
two great indentures are Exmouth Gulf and Shark Bay, and we may fairly
conclude we detect Houtman’s Abrolhos in about their proper parallel of
from 28° to 29° south latitude. To attempt a minute investigation of the
whole coast upon data so indefinite would be of course unreasonable, but
on this western side at least the similarity is sufficient, we think, on
every ground to establish its identity with the west coast of Australia.
On the eastern side the discrepancies are much greater. Having already
spoken of the latitude and longitude, we now speak merely of the outline
of the coast. In the ancient map we see no huge promontory terminating
in Cape York, but let the reader recall the suggestion that the visits
to these coasts were made on various occasions, and naturally less
frequently to the eastern than to the western side, and let the result
of these considerations be that the promontory may have been altogether
unvisited or ignored, and we shall have forthwith an explanation of the
form of the north-east coast line on the early maps. Let a line be drawn
from the southernmost point of the Gulf of Carpentaria to Halifax Bay,
and the form of outline we refer to is detected immediately. Nor is this
conjecture without corroboration from the physical features of the
country. On the ancient map we find several rivers laid down along the
north-east coast. If we examine the corresponding coast in the Gulf of
Carpentaria, those rivers are seen to exist; whereas from Cape York all
along the coast of Australia to the twenty-second or twenty-third
degree, there is not even an indication of a river emptying itself into
the sea. The great number of islands and reefs laid down along the
north-east coast of the early maps coincides with the Great Barrier
reefs, and with the Cumberland and Northumberland islands, and a host of
others which skirt this part of the shores of Australia. “Coste
dangereuse,” “Bay perdue,” and “R. de beaucoup d’Isles,” are names which
we readily concede to be appropriate to portions of such a coast. The
name of “Coste des Herbaiges,” of which we have already spoken as having
been erroneously supposed by many geographers to apply to Botany Bay,
was probably given to that part of the coast where the first symptoms of
fertility were observed in passing southward, the more northern portions
of the shore being for the most part dry and barren. That it is an error
to connect the name with Botany Bay has already been shown, at p. xxxiv,
and the editor must not fail to state that the unanswerable reason there
adduced was derived from a judicious observation made to him by the late
distinguished Dr. Brown, who not only, as Humboldt has described him,
was “Botanices facile princeps,” but himself acquainted with the
locality of which he spoke.

The remainder of the coast southward is too irregularly laid down both
as to latitude and longitude, and consequently as to correctness of
conformation, to admit of any useful conjecture. It must be supposed
from the conscientiousness observable in the delineation of other parts
of the country, that this portion was laid down more carelessly, or with
less opportunity of taking observations. It is by no means improbable,
from the length of this coast line, that “Baye Neufve” is Bass’s
Straits; that “Gouffre” is Oyster Bay in Tasmania; and that the survey
really ceased at the south of that island. That the continuity of the
coast forms no ground of objection to this conjecture, may be shown by
the fact that on “a general chart exhibiting the discoveries made by
Captain Cook, by Lieut. H. Roberts,” the coast is continuous to the
south of Van Diemen’s Land, Bass’s Straits being then of course
undiscovered.

It may also be fairly presumed that the islands in the extreme east of
our extract from the Dauphin map, represent New Zealand.

If the above reasons have sufficient weight in them to justify the
supposition that the extensive country thus laid down on these early
maps is really Australia, it becomes a question of the highest interest
to ascertain, as nearly as may be, by whom, and at what date, the
discovery of this country was made.

The maps upon which the supposition of the discovery is alone founded
are all French, and that they are all repetitions, with slight
variations, from one source, is shown by the fact that the inaccuracies
are alike in all of them. But although the maps are in French, there are
indications of Portuguese in some of the names, such as Terre ennegade,
a Gallicized form of “Tierra anegada,” i.e., “land under water,” or
“sunken shoal,” “Graçal,” and “cap de Fromose.” The question then
arises, were the French or the Portuguese the discoverers? In reply, we
present the following statement.

In the year 1529, a voyage was made to Sumatra, by Jean Parmentier of
Dieppe, and in this voyage he died. Parmentier was a poet and a
classical scholar, as well as a navigator and good hydrographer. He was
accompanied in this voyage by his intimate friend the poet Pierre
Crignon, who, on his return to France, published, in 1531, the poems of
Parmentier, with a prologue containing his eulogium, in which he says of
him, that he was “le premier François qui a entrepris à estre pilotte
pour mener navires à la Terre Amérique qu’on dit Brésil, et
semblablement le premier François qui a descouvert les Indes jusqu’à
l’Isle de Taprobane, et, si mort ne l’eust pas prévenu, je crois qu’il
eust été jusques aux Moluques.” This is high authority upon this point,
coming as it does from a man of education, and a shipmate and intimate
of Parmentier himself. The French, then, were not in the South Seas
beyond Sumatra before 1529. The date of the earliest of our quoted maps
is not earlier than 1535, as it contains the discovery of the St.
Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in that year; but even let us suppose it no
earlier than that of Rotz, which bears the date of 1542, and ask, what
voyages of the French in the South Seas do we find between the years of
1529 and 1542? Neither the Abbé Raynal, nor any modern French writer,
nor even antiquaries, who have entered most closely into the history of
early French explorations, as for example, M. Léon Guérin, the author of
the _Histoire Maritime de France_, Paris, 1843, 8vo.; and of _Les
Navigateurs Français_, 8vo., Paris, 1847, offer the slightest pretension
that the French made voyages to those parts, in the early part or middle
of the sixteenth century. Now we do know from Barros and Galvano that,
at the close of 1511, Albuquerque sent from Malacca, Antonio de Breu,
and Francisco Serrano, with three ships to Banda and Malacca: they
passed along the east side of Sumatra to Java, and thence by Madura,
Bali, Sumbava, Solor, etc., to Papua or New Guinea. From thence they
went to the Moluccas and to Amboyna. See _Barros_, d. 3, l. 5, c. 6, p.
131, and _Galvano, translated by Hakluyt_, p. 378. Here we have the very
islands, forming the northern portion of the Grande Jave, at this early
date; but that which is totally wanting between this and 1529, is the
account of the various explorations of the eastern and western coasts of
the vast country described under that name. It is certain, moreover,
that France was at that time too poor, and too much embroiled in
political anxieties, to busy itself with extensive nautical
explorations. Had she so done, the whole of North America and Brazil
might now have belonged to her. At the same time, however, we know that
the Portuguese had establishments before 1529, in the East Indian
Islands, and the existence of Portuguese names on the countries of which
we speak, as thus delineated on these French maps, is in itself an
acknowledgment of their discovery by the Portuguese, as assuredly the
jealousy implied in the sentence quoted at p. vi of this introduction,
from Pierre Crignon’s Prologue, would not only have made the French most
ready to lay claim to all they could in the shape of discovery, but
would have prevented any gratuitous insertion of Portuguese names on
such remote countries, had they themselves discovered them.

But, further, as an important part of the argument, the reader must not
overlook that jealousy of the Portuguese, to which allusion has already
been made (p. v), in forbidding the communication of all hydrographical
information respecting their discoveries in these seas. As regards the
surmises of M. Barbié du Bocage respecting the probable causes of the
suppression or concealment of such documents, his carefulness and
ingenuity entitle them to the best consideration; and if those documents
really exist in France, or Rome, or elsewhere, it is much to be hoped
that they may ere long be brought to light. His Excellency the Count de
Lavradio, ambassador from Portugal to the Court of St. James’s, has
obligingly set on foot inquiries at Rome for the purpose of elucidating
this subject, which have not, however, produced any successful result.

But although we have no evidence to show that the French made any
original discoveries in the South Seas in the first half of the
sixteenth century, we have the evidence that they were good
hydrographers. Crignon describes Parmentier as “bon cosmographe et
géographe,” and says, “par luy ont esté composez plusieurs mapemondes en
globe et en plat, et maintes cartes marines sus les quelles plusieurs
ont navigué seurement.” It is dangerous to draw conclusions from
negatives; but it is both legitimate and desirable that we should give
due weight to evidence of high probability when such fall within our
notice. If all the French maps we have quoted are, as has been shown,
derived from one source, since they all contain the same errors; and if
Parmentier, who was a good hydrographer, was the only French navigator
we find mentioned as having gone so far as Sumatra before the period of
the earliest of these maps; and further, if these maps exhibit
Portuguese names laid down in these maps on a country beyond
Parmentier’s furthest point of exploration, we think the inference not
unreasonable that Parmentier may have laid down, from Portuguese maps,
the information which has been copied into those we have quoted, and
that the descriptions round the coast, which are all (as may be plainly
seen), with the exception of those which bear the stamp of Portuguese,
convertible into French, have been naturally written by French
mapmakers, in that language. We can but throw out this suggestion for
_quantum valeat_. All positive evidence, in spite of laborious research,
is wanting. The Portuguese names are but few, but there they are, and
bear their stubborn evidence. The earliest Portuguese portolani which
have met the editor’s eye are those of Joham Freire, of 1546, and of
Diego Homem, of 1558. Both these are silent on the subject. That of
Lazaro Luis and of Vas Dourado, later in the century, both examined by
Dr. Martin in Lisbon, are equally so. But this has been already
accounted for. It is true that, in a mappemonde of the date of 1526, by
one Franciscus, monachus ordinis Franciscanorum, copied into the atlas
to the “_Géographie du Moyen Age_” of Joachim Lelewel, the great Terra
Australis, extending along the south of the globe from Tierra del Fuego,
is laid down with the words “Is nobis detecta existet,” and “hæc pars
ore nondum cognita;” but this is plainly nothing more than a fanciful
extension of Magellan’s discovery of the north coast of Tierra del
Fuego, combined with the old supposition of the existence of a great
southern continent.

A similar remark occurs in the manuscript portolano of Ioan Martinez, of
Messina, of the date of 1567, in the British Museum; and in the fifth
map of the portolano of the same hydrographer, of the date of 1578, is
laid down “Meridional discoperta novamente,” with no names on it, and
only shewing the north part. The extent of what is seen is twice as long
as Java Major, which seems here to be Sumatra. It is observable that
Petan and Maletur, names occurring on or near the Terra Australis of
other maps of about this date, occur here, but close under Java Minor,
which is a long way to the west of the “Meridional discoperta
novamente.”

In 1526 the Portuguese commander, Don Jorge de Meneses, in his passage
from Malacca to the Moluccas, was carried by currents and through his
want of information respecting the route, to the north coast of Papua,
which we now know as New Guinea; and in the following year we find Don
Alvaro de Saavedra, a Spaniard, and kinsman of the great Cortes,
despatched from New Spain to the Moluccas, and also lighting on New
Guinea, where he passed a month; but nowhere in the allusions to these
voyages do we find reference to the great southern land, which is laid
down with so much detail under the name of “La Grande Jave.”

Our surmises, therefore, lead us to regard it as highly probable that
Australia was discovered by the Portuguese between the years 1511 and
1529, and, almost to a demonstrable certainty, that it was discovered
before the year 1542.

A notion may be formed of the knowledge possessed by the Spaniards in
the middle of the sixteenth century, on the part of the world on which
we treat, from the following extract from a work entitled, “El libro de
las costumbres de todas las gentes del mundo y de las Indias.”
Translated and compiled by the Bachelor Francisco Themara. Antwerp,
1556. “Thirty leagues from Java the Less is Gatigara, nineteen degrees
the other side of the equinoctial towards the south. Of the lands beyond
this point nothing is known, for navigation has not been extended
further, and it is impossible to proceed by land on account of the
numerous lakes and lofty mountains in those parts. It is even said that
there is the site of the Terrestrial Paradise.” Although this was not
originally written in Spanish, but was translated from Johannes Bohemus,
it would scarcely have been given forth to the Spaniards had better
information on such a subject existed among that people.

It has been already stated at pages xvii and xviii of this Introduction,
that in the early engraved maps of the sixteenth century, there occur
apparent indications of Australia, with names and sentences, descriptive
of the country so represented, derived from the narrative of Marco Polo,
with an intimation that some of these representations may not have
emanated solely from that narrative. The earliest of these occurs on a
mappemonde in the third volume of the polyglot bible of Arias Montanus,
and the indication of Australia there given is the more striking that it
stands unconnected with any other land whatever, and bears no kind of
description. It is simply a line indicating the north part of an
unexplored land, exactly in the position of the north of Australia,
distinctly implying an imperfect discovery, but not copied from, or
bearing any resemblance to, any indication of the kind in any previous
map with which the editor is acquainted.

In Thevet’s _Cosmographie Universelle_, Paris, 1575, is a map with
Taprobane, La Grand Jave, Petite Jave, Partie de la Terre Australe; and
in tom. i, liv. 12, the following passage:

  “L’art et pratique du navigage est le plus pénible et dangereux de
  toutes les sciences, que oncques les hommes ayent inventées, veu que
  l’homme s’expose à la mercy des abysmes de ce grand ocean, qui
  environne et abbreuve toute la terre. Davātage, avec ceste Esquille
  lon peult visiter presque toute ce que le monde contient en sa
  rotondité, soit vers la mer glaciale, ou les deux poles, et terre
  Australe, qui n’est encor comme ie croy descouverte, mais selon mon
  opinion d’aussi grande estendue que l’Asie ou l’Afrique, et laquelle
  un iour sera recherchée par le moyen de ce petit instrument
  navigatoire, quelque long voyage qui y peust estre.”

In Dalrymple’s _Hist. Coll. of Voyages in the South Pacific Ocean_, Juan
Fernandez is said to have discovered the southern continent. Burney, who
speaks of his discovery of the southern continent (vol. i, p. 300),
refers to the memorial of Juan Luis Arias for the description. See the
first article in the present collection.

It is needless here to repeat the names and sentences already described
at page xvii as given on early engraved maps from Marco Polo, but it
will be well to notice such peculiarities as distinguish these maps from
those in manuscript, which we have already been speaking of as probably
representing Australia under the name of La Grande Jave. Such notice is
the more interesting as the date of these engraved maps is intermediate
between that of the manuscript documents and the period of the
authenticated discovery of Australia. In the 1587 edition of Ortelius is
a map entitled “Typus Orbis Terrarum,” in which _New Guinea is made an
island_, with the words “Nova Guinea quæ an sit insula aut pars
continentis Australis incertum.” On the Terra Australis, here brought up
far more to the north than elsewhere, and separated from New Guinea only
by a strait, are the words, “Hanc continentem Australem nonnulli
Magellanicam regionem ab ejus inventore nuncupant.” While this sentence
shows how indefinite was the idea of the extent of Australia towards the
south, we think that the entire delineation, which brings the great
Terra Australis so far northward in this longitude into connexion with
New Guinea, goes far to show that Australia had really been discovered.

In various editions of Mercator occur copies of a map entitled, “Orbis
Terræ Compendiosa descriptio quam ex magna universali Gerardi Mercatoris
Rumoldus Mercator fieri curabat aº 1587,” in which similar indications
are given to those in the map of Ortelius just described.

In the map of Peter Plancius, given in the English edition of the
voyages of Linschoten, 1598, similar indications of Australia occur, but
leaving the question of the insular character of New Guinea doubtful.

In the _Speculum Orbis_ of C. de Judæis, Antwerp, 1592, is a map
entitled “Brasilia et Peruvia,” on which occurs, “Chæsdia seu Australis
Terra quam nautarum vulgus Tierra di Fuego vocant, alii Psittacorum
Terram.” In the map of Asia, in the same volume, a tract is laid down
which, by comparison with Ortelius’ map of the Pacific Ocean, is plainly
New Guinea; and on both these maps, on the west coast of said tract, are
the words, “Tierra baixa,” which seems to tally with “Baie Basse,” at
about the corresponding point on the manuscript maps, and is
confirmatory of the conclusion which the editor had formed, as stated on
page xxvi. In the same volume is a map of the Antarctic hemisphere, in
which the Terra Australis incognita is brought high up to the north in
the longitude of Australia: on that part of it opposite the Cape of Good
Hope is the following legend: “Lusitani bonæ spei legentes capitis
promontorium, hanc terram austrum versus extare viderunt, sed nondum
imploravere,” a significant sentence, if allowance be made for the
difficulty at that time of reckoning the longitude.

In the map to illustrate the voyages of Drake and Cavendish by Jodocus
Hondius, of which a fac-simile was given in _The World Encompassed by
Sir Francis Drake_, printed for our Society, New Guinea is made a
complete island, without a word to throw a doubt on the correctness of
the representation; while the Terra Australis, which is separated from
New Guinea only by a strait, has an outline remarkably similar to that
of the Gulf of Carpentaria. These indications give to this map an
especial interest, and the more so that it is shown to be earlier than
the passage of Torres through Torres’ Straits in 1606, by its bearing
the arms of Queen Elizabeth, before the unicorn of Scotland had
displaced the dragon of England.

In the article “Terra Australis,” in Cornelius Wytfliet’s _Descriptionis
Ptolemaicæ Augmentum_, Louvain, 1598, we find the following passage:—

  “The ‘Australis Terra’ is the most southern of all lands, and is
  separated from New Guinea by a narrow strait. Its shores are
  hitherto but little known, since after one voyage and another, that
  route has been deserted, and seldom is the country visited unless
  when sailors are driven there by storms. The ‘Australis Terra’
  begins at two or three degrees from the equator, and is maintained
  by some to be of so great an extent, that if it were thoroughly
  explored, it would be regarded as a fifth part of the world.”

The above significant statement was printed, it will be remembered,
before any discovery of Australia of which we have an authentic account.

But while examining these indications of a discovery of Australia in the
sixteenth century, it will be asked what explorations had been made by
the Spaniards in that part of the world in the course of that century.
From the period of the voyage of Don Alvaro de Saavedra to the Moluccas
in 1527, already alluded to, we meet with no such active spirit of
exploration on the part of the Spaniards in the South Seas. Embarrassed
by his political position, and with an exhausted treasury, the emperor,
in 1529, definitely renounced his pretensions to the Moluccas for a sum
of money, although he retained his claim to the islands discovered by
his subjects to the east of the line of demarcation now confined to the
Portuguese. In 1542 an unsuccessful attempt to form a settlement in the
Philippine Islands was made by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, but its failure
having been attributed to mismanagement, a new expedition in 1564 was
despatched with the like object under Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, which was
completely successful, and a Spanish colony was established at Zebu. It
is not impossible that this settlement gave rise to voyages of discovery
about this time by the Spaniards, of which no accounts have been
published. In 1567 Alvaro de Mendana sailed from Callao on a voyage of
discovery, in which he discovered the Solomon Islands and several
others. There are great discrepancies in the different relations of this
voyage. In 1595 he made a second voyage from Peru, in which he
discovered the Marquesas, and the group afterwards named by Carteret
Queen Charlotte’s Islands. The object of this expedition was to found a
colony on the Solomon Islands, which he had discovered in his previous
voyage, but from the incorrectness of his reckoning he was unable to
find them. In the island of Santa Cruz he attempted to establish a
colony, but without success, and in this island he died. In this second
voyage he had for his chief pilot Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who may be
regarded as the last of the distinguished mariners of Spain, and whose
name claims especial notice in a work treating of the early indications
of Australia, although he himself never saw the shores of that great
continental island.[7]

The discovery of the island of Santa Cruz suggested to the mind of
Quiros that the great southern continent was at length discovered, and
in two memoirs addressed by him to Don L. de Velasco, viceroy of Peru,
we meet with the first detailed argument upon this great geographical
question, which, though he himself was not destined to demonstrate it by
an actual discovery, may nevertheless be said to have been indirectly
brought to a solution through his instrumentality. It is true that it is
difficult in dealing with these vague surmises respecting the existence
of a southern continent to draw distinctions between Australia itself
and the great continent discovered in the present century, some twenty
or thirty degrees to the south of that vast island. It has been already
stated, p. xxxi, that Dalrymple, nearly two centuries later, earnestly
advocated the same cause as De Quiros had done, and speaking of that
navigator he says: “The _discovery_ of the southern continent,
_whenever_ and by _whomsoever_ it may be completely effected, is in
_justice_ due to this _immortal_ name.” It should be premised that there
are, in fact, three points of ambiguity in connexion with the name of
that navigator, which it is well at once to state, as they might mislead
the judgment of the superficial reader of the history of navigation of
that period as to his connexion with the discovery of Australia. In the
first place, though generally reputed to be a Spaniard, he is described
by Nicolas Antonio, the author of the _Bibliotheca Hispana_, himself a
Spaniard, and not unwilling, it may be supposed, to claim so
distinguished a navigator for his countryman, as “Lusitanus. Eborensis,
ut aiunt Lusitani” (a Portuguese, stated by the Portuguese to be a
native of Evora), and the style of his writings bears out the
supposition. Secondly, Antonio de Ulloa, in his _Resumen_, p. 119,
quotes from an account of the voyage of Quiros, said to be given in the
_Historia de la Religion Serafica of Diego de Cordova_ (a work which the
editor has not met with), the discovery of a large island in
_twenty-eight degrees_ south latitude, which latitude is farther south
than Quiros or his companions are otherwise known to have made in any
voyage. Thirdly, the printed memoirs of Quiros bear the title of Terra
Australis Incognita, while the southern Tierra Austral, discovered by
Quiros himself, and surnamed by him “del Espiritu Santo,” is none other
than the “New Hebrides” of the maps of the present day.

At the same time, to both Quiros and Dalrymple we are indirectly
indebted for the earliest designation which attaches in any sense to the
modern nomenclature connected with Australia, viz., for the name of
Torres Straits. That Quiros, whether by birth a Portuguese or a
Spaniard, was in the Spanish service, cannot be doubted. The viceroy of
Peru had warmly entertained his projects, but looked upon its execution
as beyond the limits of his own power to put into operation. He
therefore urged to Quiros to lay his case before the Spanish monarch at
Madrid, and furnished him with letters to strengthen his application.
Whether Philip III was more influenced by the arguments of De Quiros, as
to the discovery of a southern continent, or rather by the desire to
explore the route between Spain and America by the east, in the hope of
discovering wealthy islands between New Guinea and China, we need not
pause to question. It is possible that both these motives had their
weight, for Quiros was despatched to Peru with full orders for the
carrying out of his plans, addressed to the Viceroy, the Count de
Monterey; and he was amply equipped with two well-armed vessels and a
corvette, with which he sailed from Callao on the 21st of December,
1605. Luis Vaez de Torres was commander of the _Almirante_, or second
ship, in this expedition. The voyage was looked upon as one of very
great importance; and Torquemada, in his account of it in the _Monarquia
Indiana_, says that the ships were the strongest and best armed which
had been seen in those seas. The object was to make a settlement at the
island Santa Cruz, and from thence to search for the Tierra Austral, or
southern continent.

After the discovery of several islands, Quiros came to a land which he
named Australia del Espiritu Santo, supposing it to be a part of the
great southern continent. At midnight of the 11th of June, 1606, while
the three ships were lying at anchor in the bay which they had named San
Felipe and Santiago, Quiros, for reasons which are not known, and
without giving any signal or notice, was either driven by a storm, or
sailed away from the harbour, and was separated from the other two
ships.

Subsequently to the separation, Torres found that the Australia del
Espiritu Santo was an island, and then continued his course westward in
pursuance of the exploration. In about the month of August, 1606, he
fell in with a coast in 11½ degrees south lat., which he calls the
beginning of New Guinea; apparently the south-eastern part of the land
afterwards named Louisiade by M. de Bougainville, and now known to be a
chain of islands. As he could not pass to windward of this land, Torres
bore away along its south side, and himself gives the following account
of his subsequent course. “We went along three hundred leagues of coast,
as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2½ degrees, which
brought us into 9 degrees. From hence we fell in with a bank of from
three to nine fathoms, which extends along the coast above one hundred
and eighty leagues. We went over it, along the coast, to 7½ south
latitude; and the end of it is in 5 degrees. We could not go further on
for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail
south-west, in that depth, to 11 degrees south lat. There is all over it
an archipelago of islands without number, by which we passed; and at the
end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large
islands, and there appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited
by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances,
arrows, and clubs of stone ill fashioned. We could not get any of their
arms. We caught, in all this land, twenty persons of different nations,
that with them we might be able to give a better account to Your
Majesty. They give much notice of other people, although as yet they do
not make themselves well understood. We were upon this bank two months,
at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms, and
5 degrees south latitude, and ten leagues from the coast; and, having
gone four hundred eighty leagues here, the coast goes to the north-east.
I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to
the north.”

The very large islands seen by Torres in the 11th degree of south
latitude, are evidently the hills of Cape York; and the two months of
intricate navigation, the passage through the strait which separates
Australia from New Guinea. A copy of this letter of Torres was
fortunately lodged in the archives of Manilla; and it was not till that
city was taken, in 1762, by the English, that the document was
discovered by Dalrymple; who paid a fitting tribute to the memory of
this distinguished Spanish navigator, by giving to this dangerous
passage the name of Torres’ Straits, which it has ever since retained.
The editor has striven in vain to learn into whose hands Dalrymple’s
copy of this letter has fallen. He has been compelled, therefore, to
reprint it from Dalrymple’s translation, supplied to Admiral Burney, as
inserted at the end of vol. ii of his _Discoveries and Voyages in the
South Sea_.