The geographical ideas of the times required such a continent, [44]and
even before the circumnavigation of Africa, the world-maps indicated
to the southward "terra incognita secundum Ptolemeum,"{1} or a land of
extreme temperature and wholly unknown.{2} The sailing of ships round
the Cape of Good Hope dissipated in some degree this belief but it
merely placed some distance between that cape and the supposed Terra
Australia which was now extended to the south of America, separated on
the maps from that continent only by the narrow Straits of Magellan, and
stretching to the westward, almost approaching New Guinea.{3}