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"Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man,
I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?
One inch of delay more is a South-sea of Discovery. . . . I prithee,
take the cork out of my mouth that I may drink thy tidings."
 
As You Like It, III. ii.

INTRODUCTION

Before any part of the southern regions of the earth was known to Europeans there was speculation, chiefly among men adept in theology and dialectics, whether there could be antipodes. Some declared it positively sinful to believe in the existence of lands situated where the upholders of the contrary theory believed that there probably was a habitable continent. Lactantius, "the Christian Cicero" (b. A.D. 260), asked whether anybody could be so absurd as to believe that there were men whose feet were higher than their heads, places where things hung upwards, where trees grew downwards, and where water fell up instead of down (Divinarum Institutionum, III. xxiv.). The greatest figure in the early church was St. Augustine of Hippo, and he, unfortunately, gave the authority of his name to the same argument. "There is no reason", he wrote (De Civitate Dei, XVI. g), "for giving credit to that fabulous hypothesis of men who walk a part of the earth opposite to our own, whose feet are in a position contrary to ours, and where the sun rises when it sets with us." St. Augustine also pointed out that Scripture, the true guide as to what men should believe, said nothing about antipodes, nor was there any historical testimony to the existence of such regions; the belief in them was mere conjecture, wholly unworthy of acceptance.

A lesser man than these, the monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who wrote a puzzle-headed book on cosmography in the sixth century, denounced the antipodean hypothesis as both a theological and a geographical heresy. Did not the Scriptures say that the rain fell upon the earth? How could it be said to fall at the antipodes if it came up? How ridiculous it was to suppose that there were men whose heads were hanging downward in space, whilst the soles of their feet were opposite the soles of other men in another part of the earth! Such beliefs were not merely old wives' tales handed down from the pagan Greeks; they were blasphemous; they made Christ a liar, and the word of God a heap of errors.

By one of the pleasant ironies of history there are nowadays churches dedicated to St. Augustine in the antipodes, the very existence of which he declared to be incredible; but none, so far as is known, are dedicated to less famous but, on this subject, more dependable ecclesiastics who championed the contrary idea St. Isidore of Seville saw no objection to a belief in antipodean lands, though it is not clear that he realised the possibility of people living in them. Virgilius, one of the Irish priests who in the eighth century were sent to evangelise Central Europe, appears to have derived a belief in the existence of antipodean lands from the reading of ancient books. In A.D. 748 he was reported to have declared that there was another world, inhabited by other men, "sub terra"; for this heresy he was attacked by St. Boniface and condemned by Pope Zacharias, and was forced to disown his belief. Happily the speculation appears to have done him no harm in the long run, as he became Archbishop of Salzburg and was sainted.

FERDINAND MAGELLAN

Controversy on this topic was set at rest, however, during the great period of geographical discovery from the last decade of the fifteenth century to about the middle of the sixteenth. The voyages of Bartholomew Diaz (1486) and Vasco da Gama (1497) round the Cape of Good Hope, Magellan's voyage through the strait which bears his name, and his discovery of the Pacific Ocean (1519-21), left no room for doubt. Richard Eden, writing in the reign of Edward VI of England, made sport of the "chyldische erroures" of Lactantius and St. Augustine; and a contemporary astronomer, Peter Apian, wrote:

"But do not doubt, gentle readers of this work, that the Apostles of Jesus Christ were antipodal the one to the other, and walked each with his feet against the other's. For if St. James the Greater, brother of St. John the Evangelist and son of Zebedee, preached the word of God in Spain in the kingdom of Galicia (where his body, they say, now lies), and St. Thomas on the Indian mainland, which two regions are antipodal and go directly with men's steps opposed to each other . . . understand that they do not lie exactly opposite each other, but, since the inexactitude is very small, they should be called Antipodes. For the Spaniards are antipodes to the Indians and the Indians in like manner to the Spaniards."

What was true of east and west was equally true of north and south. The idea of antipodes was well established, and Marlowe seized upon it for a climax to his pyramid of hyperbole when he made Tamburlaine the Great declare:

"We mean to travel to the antarctic pole,
Conquering the people underneath our feet,
And be renowned as never emperors were."

Pigafetta, a companion of Magellan on his voyage, and its historian, relates that the ships departed from the strait on November 28, 1520, and sailed three months and twenty days before any land was seen. Pacificum (that is, peaceful) seemed an appropriate name for the newly-found ocean; "in truth it is a peaceful ocean, for in all that time we suffered no storm." The Pacific was gracious and placid for its discoverers, as it can be when a quiet mood lies upon its vast expanse of basking blue, and its coral-fringed islands seem to be set in a region where "it is always afternoon." Magellan's crew did not know it in a rage. Other interesting observations they made: "The Antarctic Pole", wrote Pigafetta, "is not so well supplied with stars as is the Arctic Pole. But one sees many small stars clustered together, which have the appearance of two mist-clouds (nebulae). There is but little distance between them, and they are rather dim." That was the first record made by Europeans (the Arabs had seen them long before) of the star-clouds since known as the Magellanic Clouds. A little later there were other stars to see; "when we were in the midst of that open expanse, we saw a cross with five very bright stars directly westwards, which are placed very exactly with regard to each other" (i.e. are equidistant from each other), a description of the Southern Cross sufficient for identification, though not precisely accurate. Magellan himself was killed in a fight with the natives of the Philippines, but one of his ships, the Victoria, safely returned to Europe. The speculation that on this voyage the ship came near the western Australian coast is not supported by a careful study of Pigafetta's narrative. He describes Timor, but the voyage from that island to the Cape of Good Hope would not have brought the Victoria within a hundred miles of Australia; nor does Galvano's later narrative (circa 1555) warrant such an inference.

The discovery of the Pacific, however, with the Portuguese discovery of the Cape route to India, put the antipodes on the map. Further debate on that theme was at an end. New lands, new seas, new stars, came within the world's definite knowledge.

But the endeavour to fit the fresh knowledge into the old scheme of cosmography occasioned a new and gigantic error. A great southern continent, which nobody had ever seen, but which many assumed must be there, was placed upon a succession of maps of the world; and, as there was no dependable information about it, the name given to it was Terra Australis Incognita. The generation of this large geographical fiction can, with a little patience, be traced.

Throughout the Middle Ages much reliance was reposed, in regard to geographical questions, in Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria. Ptolemy was a mathematician and astronomer who (circa A.D. 1150-60) set himself to reform the map of the known world. The reform which in his view was needed was to determine the latitude and longitude of features and places shown upon the maps. Working at Alexandria, then the most important seaport in the world, he was in a position to gather information from men who had made voyages to various parts of Europe and to Asia. But his data were incomplete, not merely because the world was inadequately known in his day, but also because even as to some parts which were known his information was inaccurate. He did not know much of Africa below the tropic of Cancer, he was ignorant of the extreme eastern end of Asia, his outline of India was wrong, and of course he did not dream of the existence of another continent westwards across the Atlantic. Being also unaware what the southern regions of the earth were like, Ptolemy drew a line across the bottom of his map, connecting Africa with Further India, and put upon the space below this line the lettering Terra Incognita. He did not know anything about it, and candidly said so; it was land unknown, if there were any land there at all.

In the sixteenth century there were published maps of the world which, in respect of southern regions, may be divided into two classes. One series of maps showed no land mass whatever below America and Africa. A beautiful map of this class is the one drawn on vellum which hangs in the Vatican Museum at Rome. It was produced by Diego Ribero at Seville in 1529, and is a correct representation of the world as known at that date. Ribero knew of no southern continent, and showed nothing but open ocean where the continent of Australia lies. Indeed he has a pretty picture of a Spanish ship, with all her sails bellying before the wind, in the very quarter where Western Australia is. A map published at Paris in 1587 was also without any outline of land to the south of America. These are types of quite truthful maps, wherein imagination does not supply what was deficient in positive geographical knowledge.

But another series of maps indicated an impatience with this great expanse of emptiness; and the cosmographers who drew them put in a fanciful Terra Australis Incognita. They did not agree as to the outline of this great land mass, which was supposed to surround the South Pole, and to reach northwards as far as the tropic of Capricorn. The map of Plancius (Amsterdam, 1594) is unlike that of Hondius (1595), and neither resembled any land actually existing in that quarter of the globe. It was a terra australis imaginaria.

The most misleading of this group of maps was one, the earliest example of which is supposed to have been drawn for the son of Francis I of France, the Dauphin who was afterwards King Henry II. It was long believed to have been prepared from some unknown Portuguese original, and to afford proof that Portuguese navigators were acquainted with part at least of the coast of Australia between 1511 and 1529; but closer examination has dissipated that belief completely. The maker of the "Dauphin" map was possibly Pierre Desceliers of Arques. At any rate a map undoubtedly made by him not more than twenty years later shows a coastal outline very similar to that of the "Dauphin" map, and is decorated similarly with human, animal and other figures. Both maps show men building wooden houses. Camels and deer are figured; and on the second we find also elephants, a temple, a castellated building like a fortress, and people wearing clothes made of some woven fabric. These figures cannot be representative of anything seen in Australia, where there were no such animals, and no people who wore fabrics, or who knew the use of building tools, or who built houses. The figures are very like the decorations which at this period Catalan map-makers, working in Barcelona, used to put upon their maps to illustrate the kind of life led by the people of the countries mapped.

What had happened in this case was that the map-maker, working probably from a Catalan original not now known to exist, wanted to illustrate by means of these little figures the life of the people of Java. He also had before him a copy of Ptolemy's map; so he connected up Java with Ptolemy's imaginary outline of Terra Incognita, and also with the outline of the land which Magellan saw to the south of him when he sailed through his strait in 1520. But in so doing he played tricks with Ptolemy's frank confession of ignorance. He did not like the look of Ptolemy's plain line, so he serrated it. He actually attributed names to the teeth of the saw as if they were real capes, and showed rivers flowing into the gaps between. He produced a pretty and mysterious-looking map, which geographically was a hoax. There is no land where Desceliers marked those capes and streams. There is no continent stretching from Java to South America on the one side and to the south of Africa on the other. In joining up Java with Ptolemy's line he necessarily covered the area where the real continent of Australia was, and accidentally produced a certain delusive resemblance to part of the outline of that land. Desceliers' map does not prove that up to this date any navigator had seen any portion of Australia.

Yet these maps, and a lingering sense of the authority of the venerable Ptolemy, induced a general belief in the existence of the great southern continent, which survived until Captain James Cook set out to look for it and did not find it. In 1772, and again in 1775, Cook sailed backwards and forwards over the region where it was supposed to be. He found plenty of fog and ice, but no land; and he told the world confidently that it was not there. After Cook there was no more reason for believing in Terra Australis Incognita than in the marvels of the mendacious Sir John Mandeville or the figments of Lucian's exuberant imagination.

The first question of political importance which arose out of South Sea discovery concerned the rival claims of Spain and Portugal to the Moluccas. The bull of partition issued by Pope Alexander VI gave Spain exclusive rights of discovery and exploitation westward of a line drawn down the Atlantic to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, whilst the Portuguese were to enjoy similar rights eastward of the line. But that demarcation assumed a flat surface across which the line was drawn. When the Pacific was discovered, the Spaniards reached the Moluccas by sailing west, the Portuguese by sailing east. Both intended to observe the Papal award, but it had not contemplated the rotundity of the earth and the existence of another ocean. Consequently there was a dispute as to which nation had the better right to the trade of the Moluccas.

The sovereigns of Spain and Portugal appointed "cosmographers and pilots which should determine the controversy." The Spaniards produced a globe upon which the Pope's line was carried round into the Pacific, but the Portuguese refused to accept a decision contrary to their interests. Evidently there was bitter feeling about the issue. Peter Martyr of Seville relates "a merry tale" of "a little boy who stood keeping his mother's clothes which she had washed" by the side of the river Guadiana, when certain Portuguese emissaries walked past. The lad inquired of them whether they were the men who were dividing the world with his sovereign; as they answered yes, "he took up his shirt," revealed his hinder parts, and said, "Come and draw your line here through the midst;" which saying, avers the Spanish chronicler, "was afterwards in everyone's mouth and laughed at in the town of Badajos, yea, even among the commissioners themselves, of whom some were angry and some marvelled at the saying of the child." The king of Spain, however-Charles I (fifth Holy Roman Emperor of that name)—did not desire to prolong the contention with Portugal, and agreed to sell to that country whatever rights he possessed in the Moluccas and neighbouring lands, much to the dissatisfaction of the Spanish trading classes, "who well understood the profit, commodity and richness of that trade."

After the occupation of Central and South America by the Spaniards, it was but natural that they should wish to ascertain whether there were valuable territories across the ocean which washed the western coasts of the American continent. The records which we have of Spanish voyages in the Pacific during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries leave no doubt that those responsible for them implicitly believed in the existence of the great southern continent. Mendaña, the pioneer, set out from Lima in 1567 "for the discovery of certain islands and of a terra firma", by which term was meant a continent. Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, in his letters, speaks of the mainland of America as "terra firma", and it was a customary expression among the Spaniards of the age of discovery for describing land masses as distinguished from islands. Mendaña was the nephew of Lope Garcia de Castro, Viceroy of Peru, who authorised the expedition on the advice of Pedro Sarmiento, one of the boldest and most enterprising of the Spanish-Americans of this period. Sarmiento sailed with the expedition, and it is clear from the narrative of the voyage that, if his advice had been taken, the eastern shores of Australia would have been discovered. But-there was contention on board between him and the pilot, Gallego, who insisted on sailing upon a route which brought the Solomon Islands into view in February 1568.

Both Mendaña and Gallego, who wrote reports on the voyage, agree that it was believed by the Spaniards that they had found the continent. "We thought it must be a continent", said Mendaña. But further examination of the vicinity seems to have convinced them that they had reached an extensive group of islands, for Sarmiento wrote of "the western islands in the South Ocean commonly called the isles of Solomon". It is from Lopez Vaz, a Portuguese writer whose story of South Sea exploration was translated by Hakluyt, that we learn why the name was chosen: "The discoverer of these Islands named them the Isles of Solomon, to the end that the Spaniards supposing them to be those Isles from whence Solomon fetched gold to adorn the temple at Jerusalem, might be the more desirous to go and inhabit the same." The intention was, of course, that valuable lands, if any were found, should be occupied by the subjects of the Spanish Crown. The Solomons, however, did not offer much that promised to be profitable. The inhabitants were wild and warlike, showing no disposition to receive the messages and ministrations of the Franciscan friars who accompanied Mendaña with the hope of winning fresh conquests for their faith. No precious metals were found. The voyage was fruitless, except for the geographical discovery which added the Solomons to the map.

No satisfactory reasons are available why Mendaña did not make further efforts to explore the Pacific for more than a quarter of a century after his voyage of 1567-8. There is evidence that in 1574 the King of Spain granted him a licence to establish a colony; but either he was prevented by the Viceroy of Peru from making use of it, or was unable to raise the means. Lopez Vaz gives the following explanation: "Now the same time when they thought to have sent colonies unto these islands, Captain Drake entered the South Sea; whereupon commandment was given, that they should not be inhabited, to the end that such Englishmen, and of other nations as passed the Straits of Magellan to go to the Malucos (Moluccas) might have no succour there, but such as they got of the Indian people."

The Spaniards had good reason for regarding Francis Drake and other English voyagers as unwelcome intruders into the South Sea, and it may well be that it was considered undesirable to establish a colony where foreign adventurers might find such "comfortable dew of heaven", together with "some crowns and reasonable booties", as satisfied them. But Drake did not penetrate the Pacific till 1578; if Mendaña had possessed resources for another expedition, he might have been expected to take steps to give effect to the project between 1574 and t hat date. Drake was, truly, a very-present fear to the Spanish authorities in America, but there is some post hoc, propter hoc, confusion in the explanation given by Lopez Vaz.

In 1595, however, Mendaña did make his second attempt, with four ships, which sailed from Callao in April. Colonisation as well as exploration was clearly intended, for there was "a goodly company of married couples" on board. After very slowly crawling over the ocean for three months and twelve days, the ships reached a group of islands which had not been sighted on the previous voyage. Mendaña named them the Marquesas, after the Viceroy of Peru at that time, the Marquis de Mendoza. But he could not find the Solomons again. He was hundreds of miles out in his calculations. The ships sailed on and, on across the Pacific, but the earthly paradise that the commander had promised never shone upon the horizon. Crews and passengers became mutinous. "No one knows where we are", they said; and they were right. "The Isles of Solomon had fled away, or the Adelantado had forgotten where they were." On September 7 an island, which Mendaña named Santa Cruz, was sighted and admired for its beauty. But that night one of the four ships, the Santa Isabel, disappeared. Probably she struck a coral rock and foundered. Her loss increased the doubt and depression already prevailing. A mutiny arose. Mendaña put the ringleader to death, but a few days later he himself died.

His widow, who had shared the excitements of the voyage, was a woman of remarkable determination. She took command of the expedition, with the title of Governess, and was able to exert sufficient authority to induce the crews to search farther for the lost Solomons. Groping about in the brilliant sunlight of a southern summer for islands which were not where they Were supposed to be and a continent which was never anywhere, these quixotic dons of Peru at length gave up the quest and sailed for the Philippines. A second ship foundered, leaving not a wrack behind. After suffering severe privations the survivors reached Manila in February 1596. Mendaña's widow vowed that she would engage priests and people and return to complete the discovery; but she never did, and the Solomons remained in the undisturbed possession of their head-hunting inhabitants for a period of 214 years after Mendaña found them.

The voyages of circumnavigation of Francis Drake (1577-80), and of Thomas Cavendish (1586-8) made the South Seas known to English seamen. Drake evoked a rhapsody from Richard Hakluyt, the ever-watchful historian of the maritime exploits of the Elizabethan age. "What English ships", he wrote, "did heretofore ever anchor in the mighty river of Plate? pass and repass the unpassable (in former opinion) strait of Magellan, range along the coast of Chili, Peru, and all the backside of Nova Hispania, further than any Christian ever passed, traverse the mighty breadth of the South Sea, land upon the Luzones in despite of the enemy, enter into alliance, amity and traffic with the princes of the Moluccas, and the isle of Java, double the famous Cape of Bona Speranza, arrive at the Isle of Santa Helena, and last of all return home most richly laden with the commodities of China, as the subjects of this now flourishing monarchy have done?" Drake's voyage is important not only as an achievement, but also because he for the first time introduced a note of scepticism as to the existence of the supposed Terra Australis Incognita. Magellan had apparently supposed the land south of the strait to be part of this continent. But Drake, driven south by a storm, found that below what we now call Cape Horn (which is marked as "Insula Elizabeth" on the map of the region made by Francis Fletcher, "Preacher of the Gospel, adventurer and traveller in the same voyage") there was open sea connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.

No man in that age had a firmer belief in the existence of the great southern continent than Pedro Fernandez de Quiros. He was Portuguese by birth, but had been a subject of the Spanish Crown since he was fifteen years of age. He had accompanied Mendaña as chief pilot in 1595, and wrote one of the original narratives of that voyage. It was his ambition to take up the research, and to establish the King of Spain as sovereign of these lands, lest the English should find them first, corrupt the natives with their heresies, and dominate the South Seas with their sea power. He visited Spain and Rome to solicit aid. The Pope gave him audience, blessed his mission, and gave him a piece of the wood of the True Cross. The political advisers of the Spanish Crown were less encouraging. They thought the scheme doubtful, pooh-poohed the competency of Quiros, and suggested that Spain already had more territory in the New World than she could manage. But the Pope's support carried great weight, and the importunity of Quiros survived many rebuffs. He tells us that he submitted "fresh memorials every day". He wore down officials and courtiers who wanted to get rid of him. So the King was advised to give him an order for the Viceroy of Peru to provide him with two ships fitted out for the discovery of the supposed southern "islands and lands".

The Viceroy no more believed in the project than did the officials in Spain. Causes for delay were invented. Quiros was put off from day to day, from week to week. He wrote more memorials, sheaves of them. He brandished his order from the King, reminded everybody of the blessing of the Pope, and showed the precious relic. He wore down opposition at Lima as he had done at Seville. At last they gave him two ships, the St. Peter and St. Paul for flagship (capitana) and the St. Peter to carry his second-in-command (therefore known as the almirante), as well as a launch, the Three Kings, for a store ship. Six Franciscan friars joined the expedition to emphasise a religious purpose which was near to the heart of Quiros, and he with all his officers wore the Franciscan habit on the day of sailing, December 21, 1605.

On May 1, 1606, Quiros reached the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides group. He got no farther. He was a sick man, and there was a mutinous spirit on board the flagship. Torres, the commander of the almirante, was more resolute. "My temper was different from that of Captain Fernandez de Quiros", he scornfully wrote. Quiros allowed himself to be overmastered by the people whom he ought to have commanded, and crept back to America, reaching Navidad in Mexico in October. Torres determined to pursue the voyage of discovery by continuing across the Pacific and making for Manila. He passed through the strait to the north of Australia which was afterwards named after him, but it seems doubtful whether he saw the mainland of Australia, i.e. the hills of Cape York peninsula. Certain it is, at any rate, that Quiros never saw any part of Australia, and the statements sometimes made that he did so are merely mythical. He believed that Espiritu Santo was part of the great southern continent. Torres was under no such delusion. He assured himself that it was an island, and the description which he gave of the natives and the animals they kept does not fit the facts as a description of Australia. Quiros was a poor leader for an expedition of discovery. He had enthusiasm without knowledge, piety without reasonableness, persistency without balance, and courage without discretion. One of his companions called him a lunatic, a liar and a fraud; but these were the epithets of disillusion. A modern critic compares him with Don Quixote, and that is nearer the mark. He tilted at islands and thought he had speared a continent, and flourished a wisp of seaweed on the end of his lance as a trophy of a new world subdued.

In the year of Quiros' failure the Dutch made the first of their important contributions towards the unveiling of the unknown south, when the yacht Duyfken, examining the coasts of New Guinea, entered the Gulf of Carpentaria. There was no romantic guess-work on the part of these practical people. They were not interested in chasing geographical phantoms. They came into the East Indies for business, and, immense as was their contribution to knowledge, they pursued their investigations with the object of extending their trading opportunities. Having laid the foundations of their colonial empire at Java in 1598, and established regular communications between that island and Holland, they were bound, sooner or later, to come upon lands hitherto not marked on maps of the world.

The Duyfken, commanded by Willem Jansz, did not find a way through Torres Strait in 1606, though there is every reason to believe that Jansz believed that there was a passage between New Guinea and the peninsula terminating in the headland which is now known as Cape York. Seventeen years later another Dutch skipper, Jan Carstensz, whose journal gives a full and precise account of his voyage in command of the two ships Pera and Arnhem, tried to find a way through, but was greatly troubled by coastal shoals, unfavourable winds, scarcity of fresh water, the desertion of his consort vessel, the Arnhem, the multiplicity of islands, and fights with aboriginals, He was the first navigator to give an account of Australian blackfellows, whom he described as "the most wretched and poorest creatures that I have ever seen." What was more discouraging from the point of view of the commercially-minded managers of the Dutch East India Company, he reported that he had not seen one fruit-bearing tree, "or anything that man could make use of". Carstensz's voyage of 1623, therefore, though important in the history of Dutch exploration, tended to deter his countrymen from pursuing further investigations in the seas around southern New Guinea and Northern Australia.

When they forced their way into the Eastern trade, the Dutch followed Portuguese sailing routes. Their ships, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, followed the trend of the African coast as far as Madagascar, and thence made for Java across the Indian Ocean. But in 1611 Hendrik Brouwer made a useful discovery. He found that by sailing due east for about three thousand miles from the Cape, his ships secured the advantage of favourable winds and avoided the calms which frequently hindered them in tropical seas. He therefore recommended to the directors of the Dutch East India Company that they should instruct their captains to make this easterly run, and then turn northward for Java. In following Brouwer's route some ships, bowling along before the wind, ran beyond his recommended three thousand miles, and came upon the coasts of Western Australia. The first of these was the Eendragt, commanded by Dirk Hartog. On October 25, 1616, this vessel sighted the coast of Western Australia, and erected a post with a pewter plate on it to commemorate the visit. The Company thereupon amended its sailing directions by ordering its captains to sail from the Cape between the latitudes of thirty and forty degrees for about four thousand miles until they sighted the "Land of the Eendragt", which was the first name given to any part of Australia on any map. From this date a succession of Dutch ships sighted portions of the west and north of Australia, until there was pieced together a fairly accurate outline of the land which from about 1690 became known as New Holland, and retained that name long after the English had planted Australian colonies. The whole of the important discoveries in the Australian region made between 1606 and the time of James Cook were Dutch. We may dismiss as fabulous the supposition that either the Portuguese or the Spaniards discovered any part of these coasts.

The most distinguished of the Dutch explorers of Australasia was Abel Tasman, the discoverer of New Zealand and of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). He was a skipper in the service of the Dutch East India Company, who made many voyages to and from Holland and Java, to China, Japan, India, South America and the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In 1642 the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, Anthony Van Diemen, inspired a policy of exploring the unknown southern regions, in the hope that profitable trade might result. Two ships fitted out for the purpose were placed under the command of Tasman, a man "strongly inclined to this discovery". He was accompanied by an experienced pilot and cartographer, Franz Visscher. Sailing from Batavia in August 1642, Tasman ran due south from Mauritius till he entered a very cold latitude and encountered thick fogs and heavy seas. He sailed back into the latitude Of 44° S., and on November 24 saw land-the mountains which now bear the names of his ships, Mounts Heemskirck and Zeehaen, on the west coast of Tasmania. In Frederick Henry Bay, named after the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, a pole was set up with the Company's mark cut into it, "that those who shall come after us may become aware that we have been here and have taken possession of the said land as our lawful property."

After leaving Tasmania, Tasman's ships ran east for nine days, when land was again sighted. It was the south island of New Zealand. Tasman's journal gives a very entertaining account of the Maoris, now for the first time seen by Europeans. He believed that the country was part of the supposed great southern continent, and did not explore it sufficiently to find that New Zealand consisted of islands. On his return to Batavia, though he was rewarded for the service (as were all the officers and crew), he was officially blamed because he had been "remiss in investigating the situation, conformation and nature of the lands and peoples discovered and left the main part of this task to be executed by some more inquisitive successor." It was still more vexing that he had brought back no information whether the lands which he had discovered were of any value for purposes of trade. The Company did not spend its money for the purpose of adding to geographical knowledge, however desirable that might be on scientific grounds, but with a view to increasing its business.

Despite this intimation of dissatisfaction, Tasman was chosen again in 1644 to command an expedition to ascertain whether New Guinea and the Unknown South Land were connected, or whether there was a strait dividing them. If he found a channel, he was to sail through it and pursue the coast southward until he came to the land which he had discovered two years previously. We do not know why Tasman failed in this mission; his journals have disappeared. But we have the instructions which were furnished to him, and it is clear from these that, if he had carried out the prescribed plan, he would have traversed Torres Strait and discovered the east coast of Australia in 1644. Apparently he got into the Gulf of Carpentaria and drew the inference that it was joined on to New Guinea. The Governor-General was again dissatisfied with Tasman's exploratory work, and wrote that he intended to have the problem "diligently and closely investigated by persons more vigilant and courageous than those who have hitherto been employed on this service." This purpose was never pursued, Anthony Van Diemen died in 1645, and his successors were not so keen about making fresh discoveries as he had been. Much money had been spent, and no profit had ensued. The managers of the Company in Holland discouraged further efforts of the kind. There seemed to be no commercial advantage from sending ships to examine lands inhabited by savages, when there were rich trading grounds to be exploited in Malaya, China, Japan and India.

Tasman, then, left the map of the region south of New Guinea with that island joined to the tip of what is now Cape York; and for more than a century and a quarter maps of the world continued to be published embodying that error. The Dutch made no further effort to clear up the mystery.

Nor did William Dampier, the first English explorer of these southern regions, though he had an excellent opportunity. The early career of Dampier is full of interest, stranger than any novel or film of adventure. Being thrown on his own resources by the death of his father and mother while he was a lad, he went to sea, sailed as an ordinary mariner in a ship of the East India Company, entered the Royal Navy during the Anglo-Dutch war in 1672, was discharged ill after taking part in two battles, and at length drifted to the West Indies to work on a Jamaica plantation. There he formed a connection with piratical gentry, and led a buccaneering life for several years. He first became acquainted with the Australian coasts in the ship Cygnet, Captain Swan. The mutinous crew seized the vessel while the skipper was ashore in the Philippines in 1687, and cruised about in the China seas and among the Malay islands, indulging their buccaneering propensities till it became prudent to slip away from trade-routes for a while. So they stood southward towards New Holland, intending, Dampier wrote, "to see what that country would afford us". On January 4, 1688, they fell in with the north-west coast of Australia, and lingered there for more than two months.

On his return to England Dampier published his Voyage round the Terrestrial Globe, and by dedicating the book to Charles Montague (afterwards Earl of Halifax), who was at that time President of the Royal Society, secured a humble post in the Customs House. The book was a pronounced success. Dampier was regarded as a man of exceptionally large maritime experience; and, Montague obtaining for him an introduction to the political head of the Admiralty, he was invited to submit a plan for a voyage of exploration.

In these circumstances, Dampier prepared for the consideration of the Admiralty a scheme for the examination of the unexplored coasts of New Holland. Evidently what he had seen of the land which was not yet named Australia had interested him, though no part he had seen from the coast gave promise of being a suitable field for colonisation. But he was well aware of the fact that the Dutch had found and mapped the whole of the western and northern coasts. What more profitable piece of exploration could be pursued than that of the unknown eastern and southern coasts? That was the work which Dampier proposed to the Admiralty. His scheme was perfectly sound. He would, he said, sail first to Madagascar; he would steer "directly from thence to the northernmost part of New Holland"; afterwards he would "range towards New Guinea". From that land he would direct his course southerly, "coasting by the land, and where I found a harbour or river I would land and seek about for men and other Animals, Vegetables, Minerals, etc., and having made what discovery I could I would return home by the way of Terra del Fuego." If he had pursued his investigations according to his programme, he would have discovered the east coast of Australia.

His failure to achieve this purpose was due to several causes. His crew was discontented. There were violent quarrels on board. Dampier put his chief officer in irons and confined him to his cabin in tropical seas—an act for which he was afterwards court-martialled and punished. He altered his plans on account of "the state of my ship's crew rather than my own judgment and experience." When he did at length brine, his ship, the Roebuck, to the coast of Australia, he was half-hearted in the pursuit of his design. He was, in fact, deficient in the personal qualities requisite for command and exploration. He was a good observer and an interesting writer, but his talents would have been more capably exercised in a subordinate capacity. He blamed his men for negligence and an untoward desire to return home. Everything but his own defects hindered him, according to his own apology, "from prosecuting any further my intended search". But the voyage of 1699-1701 added another delightful narrative to the English literature of the sea, and Dampier's true tale was exploited by Swift for the brilliant fiction of Gulliver's Travels; for Captain Gulliver, be it remembered, confessed his connection with "my cousin Dampier", and the land of the Houyhnhnms was placed by Swift to the south of the mysterious land marked on Dampier's map of New Holland.

In the eighteenth century the chief explorers of the South Seas were the French and the English. Bouvet, who was a believer in the existence of a great southern continent, sailed from France in 1738, commanding two vessels of the French East India Company, to search for this supposed land. They reached high latitudes where navigation was impeded by fogs and ice, and sailed (so he said) along a rocky, barren coast from which, it was recorded, "we have reaped no other advantage than being able to affirm its existence, without being able, nevertheless, to decide whether it is part of a continent or an island." Later voyagers were not able to find land where Bouvet said it was, and it was surmised that he miscalculated his position owing to variations in his compass needle due to magnetic influences. It is fairly certain that he was not, within sight of the land surrounding the South Pole, and there is no continent where Bouvet supposed himself to be looking at part of one.

In 1740 the English captain George Anson brought all but two of a squadron of ships of the Royal Navy round Cape Horn into the Pacific-the two being unable to weather the storms of the Cape; but he made no discoveries. Commodore John Byron, in H.M.S. Dolphin, threaded the Straits of Magellan in 1765, but his Pacific cruise was not important from the discovery point of view—though it was proudly remembered in the lines referring to "my grand-dad's Narrative" in a more celebrated Byron's Don Juan. The Englishmen Wallis (1766-8) and Carteret (1766-9) did useful exploring work among the island groups and the Frenchman Bougainville (1768) rescued the lost Solomons of Mendaña from oblivion and wrote a delightful book about his Pacific voyage.

The two great problems were whether Terra Australis Incognita was a myth, and what kind of land lay east and south of the land known to the Dutch as New Holland.

Both French and English writers on geography pressed the importance of discovery in this region upon the Governments and the educated public of their countries. In France Maupertuis drew up a list of some questions which it would be advantageous to science to investigate, among them that of the thorough exploration of the Austral lands. This theme was developed at length in two substantial volumes by de Brosses, in his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes (Paris, 1756). It was, this eloquent and learned writer urged, an enterprise much more worthy of the attention of an enlightened monarch, and much more glorious, than war or conquest. A succession of French voyages was due directly to the influence of de Brosses—those of Marion du Fresne (1771-2), who met his death in New Zealand; of Kerguelen (in the same years), who penetrated the antarctic seas and believed that he had found a new land which he called "la France Australe"; of Lapérouse (1785-8), who was despatched on a discovery expedition in the latter part of the reign of Louis XVI; of Dentrecasteaux (1791-3), who was sent out to look for Lapérouse; and of Nicholas Baudin (1800-4), who sailed from France for the South Seas at the beginning of the Consulate of Napoleon Bonaparte. The argument of de Brosses was sustained officially by Fleurieu, Minister of Marine under Louis XVI, and by the Institute of France, the organised promoter of scientific projects. This is the reason why there was a long succession of French South Sea exploratory voyages, extending over more than thirty years, and under Governments which varied from monarchical despotism to revolutionary and military dictatorships. French scientific curiosity thus sustained an impetus which was not diverted from its purpose by some of the most sensational political changes in modern history.

But the two great problems were solved by one man, James Cook. In 1769, after conveying a scientific party to Tahiti to study the transit of Venus, Cook directed his vessel, the Endeavour, towards New Zealand, and circumnavigated the country for the first time (Tasman in 1642 had not attempted that task). He found that New Zealand was not a continuous stretch of territory, but consisted of two large islands with a smaller island to the south; he also demonstrated certainly that it was not part of a continent. Cook was by this time convinced that the Terra Australis Incognita of the old maps was fictitious. If his ship had been thoroughly seaworthy after the buffeting of the seas round New Zealand he would probably have sailed farther south to satisfy himself that there was no continent nearer than the land mass immediately surrounding the South Pole. As that course would have been imprudent, he determined to sail westward till he fell in with the east coast of New Holland, "and then to follow the direction of that coast northward, or whatever direction it might take us, until we arrive at its northern extremity." In pursuit of that design he sailed from New Zealand at the end of March 1770; and on April 20th (by the calendar date; April 19th by the ship's log; for Cook, having sailed continuously westward since leaving England, was by ship's reckoning a day behind the calendar date) he sighted the south-eastern coast of what was hereafter to be named Australia. Ten days later he discovered and anchored in a bay which, in consequence of the great quantity of plants new to science which his botanists found there, he named Botany Bay. The coast to the northward was carefully explored and mapped, and finally, on Possession Island in Torres Strait, Cook "took possession of the whole eastern coast" by the name of New South Wales.

That, then, was one problem solved. The south coast of New Holland remained to be discovered; but it was now definitely known that this land (which the Dutch had begun to chart at the beginning of the seventeenth century) was not part of a continent. It might be itself an island-continent; it might be a group of large islands, as many at that time supposed; there might be a strait dividing the known west from the east just discovered by Cook; but at all events this land had no connection with any other land that had been dreamt of by Quiros and the believers in the great continent of the south.

There was, however, one man in England who was still a strong believer in Terra Australis Incognita. Alexander Dalrymple, who had edited a valuable Historical Collection of several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean (1771), was a great student of the literature of the subject. He had aspired to the command of the expedition of 1769-70, and did not conceal his resentment that Cook was preferred. Dalrymple was not satisfied that Terra Australis had been wiped off the map, and still raised doubts. "To put an end to all diversity of opinion about a matter so curious and important" was therefore the main object of Cook's next voyage of 1772-4, when he commanded the Resolution and the Adventure. Making for New Zealand as a rendezvous, he sailed farther south into the region of cold, where his men were "cased in frozen snow as if clad in armour", and the rigging was coated with ice. He sailed over the ground where the continent ought to have been, if it was anywhere. He took great risks, but his voyage left no room for doubt that there was no land mass between New Zealand and Cape Horn, and that the only large area of land, apart from New Zealand and New Holland, was that which was fringed by the Antarctic ice. The voyage of 1772-4 finally relegated the fondly-imagined Terra Australis Incognita to the company of lost Atlantis and the "Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon."

The murder of Cook by Hawaiian natives in 1779 is one of the great tragedies of Pacific history. The object of his voyage in that year was to search for a supposed strait through Canada from the west to Hudson's Bay. A native chief was killed by some of the crew, with the consequence that a thirst for revenge was generated. Cook had done his best to avert trouble. He was ashore with a party of marines, when they were attacked. Stones were thrown; the marines fired a volley. Cook turned to order the men to cease firing, when he was felled by a blow on the head and stabbed. Cook was one of the greatest navigators and discoverers of history, not only by virtue of the magnitude of his discoveries, but also because he cleared the map of the fictitious continent which had been imposed upon it since the sixteenth century. His attention to the health of his men and the cleanliness of his ships was so scrupulously careful that he was able to circumnavigate the globe without having a single case of scurvy on board-an unheard-of achievement up till his time.

A tragedy not less poignant, though different in surrounding circumstances, overtook the gallant French navigator Lapérouse in 1788. He was despatched to the Pacific by command of Louis XVI, with instructions to visit various groups of islands in the Pacific, including the Society, Friendly and Navigator groups, New Caledonia, Tahiti and Easter Island. He was to explore the Gulf of Carpentaria, run down the western coast of New Holland, "and take a closer view of the southern, the greater part of which has never been visited." Then he was to visit Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand; and afterwards to explore the China Sea, Japan and the Philippines. His instructions contained no reference to Botany Bay; though in fact his visit to that harbour, shortly after the arrival of the "First Fleet" which commenced the settlement of Australia, was to be particularly interesting. He was, however, to ascertain in New Zealand "whether the English have formed or entertain the project of forming any settlement on those islands, and if he should hear that they have actually formed a settlement, he will endeavour to repair thither in order to learn the condition, strength and object of the settlement."

Lapérouse visited the northern Pacific before coming south, where his troubles commenced. At one of the islands of the Navigator group a tragedy occurred. An officer and two boat parties went ashore to get fresh water, were attacked by natives, and were all massacred. Lapérouse had already sustained the loss of several men during the earlier part of the voyage, and feared that, if he lost any more through collisions with natives, he would be compelled to beach and burn one of his ships in order to leave himself with enough men to work the remaining vessel. He knew of Botany Bay through his study of the writings of Cook, and resolved to sail thither, so that he might take in wood and fresh water, and fit together the parts of two new boats which he carried in the hold. He entered Botany Bay on the morning of January 26, 1788, and was surprised to find there a large fleet of English vessels. They were the ships under the command of Governor Arthur Phillip, newly arrived to found the first colony in Australia. Phillip had by this time decided to abandon Botany Bay, because he had found a better site for the settlement at Port jack son; but Lapérouse stayed there six weeks, on terms of perfect friendship with various English officers who visited him from the new settlement five miles away. He sailed into the Pacific on March 10; and there is no doubt that his two ships were wrecked on the coral reefs of Vanicoro Island in the New Hebrides.

Disaster also overtook the expedition under the command of Bruni Dentrecasteaux which was despatched from France in 1791. The fate of Lapérouse can hardly have been considered doubtful by this time, but there v as an intense desire for definite information. Louis XVI, sorely troubled though he was by the threatening developments of the great Revolution, gave anxious attention to the question, and used such influence as he still possessed to induce the Government to send forth ships to search for tidings. The National Assembly gave an unanimous assent, and two vessels, the Recherche and the Espérance, were detailed for the task. But the expedition was ruined by the same passionate distractions as were at this time disrupting the French nation. Fierce disputes broke out on board. Dentrecasteaux and his chief officers were royalists, and insisted on the Bourbon flag being flown; their subordinates clamoured for the tricolour, which was the symbol of the Revolution. Both the commander and his principal ower, Huon Kermadec, died at sea from what was officially certified as "une colique bilieuse".

The officer upon whom the command then devolved, D'Auribeau, who was likewise a strong royalist, took the ships to Java. There information was obtained that Louis XVI had been guillotined (January 1793). D'Auribeau maintained that his loyalty was pledged to the monarchy, not to the republicans who were then governing his country. Moreover, he was of opinion that, if he sailed from Java, he and his royalist fellow-officers would be murdered by the crew; he therefore determined to hand the ships over to the Dutch colonial government. He died within a few weeks of taking this step. The survivors of the expedition were conveyed to England as prisoners of war, where one of them, Rossel, who was generously befriended by the hydrographer of the Admiralty, wrote in two volumes a Voyage de Dentrecasteaux, envoyé à la recherche de Lapérouse, wherein he discreetly refrained from mention of the troubles which prevented the expedition from fulfilling its purpose. The ships did not even put into Port Jackson or Botany Bay for information which might have assisted their search.

Captain Matthew Flinders ranks next to Cook for the importance of his maritime discoveries in the south, and even before that great navigator for the scientific thoroughness which characterised his work. Flinders, in company with the naval surgeon George Bass, sailed round Van Diemen's Land in the Norfolk in 1798, proving it to be an island, and not part of New Holland as represented on Cook's chart. Up to this date the southern coasts of Australia from the south-west corner (King George's Sound) to the south-east corner near Cape Howe were practically unknown. The diligence and skill shown by Flinders in pursuing the exploratory tasks which he set himself in such time as he could snatch, while performing his routine duties as a naval lieutenant on service in Australian waters, induced the Admiralty to entrust him with the command of the ship Investigator, with a commission to explore the southern coasts of New Holland. This task was accomplished during February-May, 1802. Spencer's and St. Vincent's Gulfs were discovered, but Flinders was forestalled by a few weeks in the discovery of Port Phillip, the most important harbour on the southern coasts of Australia, this port having been found by Lieutenant John Murray, in H.M.S. Lady Nelson, in January of the same year.

In Encounter Bay Flinders met the French vessel Le Géographe, commanded by Nicholas Baudin. Baudin had left France in October 1801 with two ships, but the second of these, the Naturaliste, had become separated from him during rough weather some weeks before he met Flinders and the Investigator. Baudin, who had never been an officer of the French navy, was nominated for this command by the Institute of France, which had requested the Government to send out an expedition having "for its sole object the perfecting of scientific knowledge". Plans for the voyage had been prepared before the end of 1800, when Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul, and he merely gave his consent to what had been arranged.

Baudin was extremely dilatory in the pursuit of his task; otherwise, having had the advantage of starting from Europe nine months before Flinders sailed from England, he would have discovered the south coast himself. The two captains met in a friendly manner on board the Géographe, and afterwards again at Port Jackson, whither Baudin went after spending a few weeks charting the two gulfs and Kangaroo Island, all previously discovered by Flinders. There is no evidence to justify the belief that the French had a colonising purpose in view; but during the Napoleonic wars the Emperor did endeavour to make military use of information gathered by the officers of Baudin's expedition. At a time when the French colony in the Indian Ocean, Ile-de-France (Mauritius), was hard pressed and in need of supplies, Napoleon directed the governor, De Caen, to "take the English colony of Port Jackson, where considerable resources will be found." But De Caen was being closely blockaded by British men-of-war, and, even if the seas had been free to him, was never in a position to attack a port so far away from Mauritius.

The circumnavigation of Australia by Flinders in 1803 may be taken to be the last considerable piece of exploratory work in these seas. There were still some portions of coast-line to be more accurately defined, still some islands in the south Pacific to be more exactly surveyed. But by 1803 the clouds of mystery had been rolled away from the regions of the south, and the map was substantially complete.

This book gives, in the words of the original narrators, the story of the more important phases of the discovery. Here are large extracts from the histories of the voyages of Tasman, Dampier, Cook and Flinders, with some glimpses of the tragedies which pertain to the exploration of the south. More than three centuries ago Shakespeare was much interested in a map which he saw in a copy of Hakluyt's Voyages, and, according to his habit of turning everything which he saw in books or in nature into imagery for his plays, adroitly used it when he made Maria in Twelfth Night say of Malvolio, "He doth smile his face into more lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies." "The augmentation of the Indies"—for the new map showed some lands which Shakespeare had not seen upon a map before. This book illustrates that process of augmentation, and shows how an imaginary continent was wiped off to make way for the real world of the south.

ERNEST SCOTT.   

Melbourne,
  1929.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The majority of the maps contained in this volume have been photographed by kind permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, the helpful co-operation of whose Librarians has rendered the work of collecting the illustrations a particularly pleasant one.

The publishers are indebted to the Hakluyt Society for permission to reproduce the Map of the World, London 1598, referred to by Professor Scott in his Introduction in the passage quoted from Twelfth Night. This map is generally regarded as the work of Emmeric Mollineux of Lambeth.

The Chart of part of the South Sea [1771], showing the lands discovered by the Endeavour, and bearing Cook's own signature, is preserved in the British Museum, as is also the original Map of Pierre Desceliers, made at Arques in the year 1550.

Thevenot's Map of New Holland, Paris 1663, is said to be copied from a map by J. Blaeu, dated Amsterdam 1659. The latter is included in the Mammoth Atlas preserved in the King's Library at the British Museum and entitled, Archipelagus Orientalis sive Asiaticus. Because of its enormous bulk-this Atlas is known as "the largest book in the world" and was presented by the Dutch merchants to Charles II—the attempt to photograph Blaeu's original was reluctantly abandoned and the Thevenot map substituted in its place.

Thanks are especially due to Mr. F. P. Sprent, the Superintendent of the Map Room in the British Museum, and his assistants; to Mr. W. G. Perrin, O.B.E., and his deputy at the Admiralty Library; to the Agent-General for New South Wales for permission to reproduce the portrait of George Bass, which appears in Volume V of the Historical Records of that State; and to S. Gravenhage Martinus Nijhoff at the Hague for a similar courtesy in connection with the portrait of Van Diemen, which is taken from the magnificent Dutch series, Onze Mannen Ter Zee in Dicht en Bild, 1572-1800.

KATHLEEN USSHER.   

WORKS OF REFERENCE

The best modern treatises on the subject of this book are Rainaud's Le Continent Austral and G. Arnold Wood's The Discovery of Australia. G. Collingridge's Discovery of Australia* is also valuable; many of its main contentions are controverted by Wood. The best biographies of Cook are those by Kitson* and Sir Walter Besant. There is a good short life of Dampier by W. Clark Russell. Heeres' The Part borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia*, and the same author's edition of Tasman's journal of his voyage of 1642*, are invaluable works. See also E. Scott's Life of Captain Matthew Flinders* and Life of Lapérouse*.

The following works published by the Hakluyt Society are of first-class importance for the original historical material which they contain: Major, Early Voyages to Australia;* Lord Amherst and Basil Thompson, Voyage of Mendaña to the Solomon Islands; Markham, The Voyages of Quiros; Corney, The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti; and Corney, The Voyage of Gonzalez to Easier Island.

The Voyages of Dampier* have been reprinted several times; the most convenient modern edition is that in one volume published by Messrs. Dent and Sons. There are also several editions of Cook's Voyages, but the only authentic edition of Cook's journal of his famous voyage of 1768-71* is that edited by the Hydrographer to the Admiralty, W. J. L. Wharton*. Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis* has never been reprinted. The Logbooks of the "Lady Nelson",* edited by Ida Lee, contains valuable material, supplementing Grant's Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery. The original narratives of the voyages of Bougainville, Lapérouse, Dentrecasteaux* and Baudin* are available in English translations as well as in the French editions.

J. Callander's Terra Australis Cognita, J. Burney's Discoveries in the South Seas*, and A. Dalrymple's Historical Collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean*, are still useful; as is also Charles de Brosses' Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes.

Note: The works marked * are available as eBooks from the
Australiana page at Project Gutenberg Australia

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