2 As in Macrobius, In Sommium Scipionis Expositio, Brescia,
1483. 3 See the map of Oronce Fine, 1522, and Ortelius,
Orbis Terrarum 1592. 4 The "Quiri Regio" was long marked on
maps as a continent lying to the south of the Solomon
Islands.
3 This was first republished at Augsburg in 1611; in a
Latin translation in Henry Hudson's Descriptio ac
Delimeatis, Amsterdam, 1612, in Dutch, Verhael van seher
Memorial, Amsterdam, 1612; in Bry, 1613, and shortly after
in Hulsius; in French, Paris, 1617; and in English, London,
1617. I give this list because even so interesting an
announcement of a genuine voyage did not have so quick an
acceptance as Neville's tract with almost the same title.
Such an expanse of undiscovered land, believed to be rich in gold,
awakened the resolution of Pedro Fernandez de Queiros, who had been a
pilot in the Mendafia voyage of 1606. By chance he failed in his object,
and deceived by the apparent continuous coast line presented to his view
by the islands of the New Hebrides group, he gave it the resounding
name of Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, because of the King's title of
Austria. On the publication of his "Relation" at Seville in 1610, the
name was altered, and he claimed to have discovered the "fourth part of
the world, called Terra Australis incognita." Seven years later, [45]in
1617, it was published in London under the title, "Terra Australia
incognita, or A new Southerne Discoverie, containing a fifth part of
the World." It is obvious that geographers and their source of
information--the adventurous sea captains--were not agreed upon the
proper number to be assigned to the Terra Australis in the world scheme.
Even in 1663 the Church seemed in doubt, for a father writes "Mémoires
touchant l'établissement d'une Mission Chrestienne dans la troisième
Monde, autrement apellé la Terre Australe, Méridionale, Antartique, &
I connue."{1} That Neville even drew his title from any of these
publications cannot be asserted, nor do they explain his designation of
the Isle of Pines as the fourth island in this southern land; but they
show the common meaning attached to Terra Australis incognita, and his
use of the words was a clever, even if not an intentional appeal to the
curiosity then so active on continents yet to be discovered.
1 Printed at Paris by Claude Cramoisy, 1663. A copy is in
the John Carter Brown Library. In 1756 Charles de Brosse
published his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes
from Vespuccius to his own day, which was largely used by
John Callender in compiling his Terra Australis Cogmta,
1766-68.
Another volume, however, written by one who afterwards became Bishop
of Norwich, may have been responsible for the conception of Neville's
pamphlet. This was Joseph Hall's "Mundus Alter et Idem sive Terra
Australis ante hac semper incognita longis itineribus peregrini
Academici nuperrime lustrata." The title says it was printed at
Frankfort, and the statement has been too readily accepted as the fact,
for the tract was entered at [46]Stationers' Hall by John Porter, June
2, 1605, and again on August 1, 1608.{1} The biographer of Bishop Hall
states that it was published at Frankfort by a friend, in 1605, and
republished at Hanau in 1607, and in a translated form in London about
1608. It is more than probable that all three issues were made in
London, and that the so-called Hanau edition was that entered in 1608.
On January 18, 1608-09, Thomas Thorpe entered the translation, with the
address to the reader signed John Healey, who was the translator.{2}
This carried the title: "The Discovery of a New World, or a Description
of the South Indies hitherto unknown."{3} It is a satirical work with
no pretense of touching upon realities. Hallam wrote of it: "I can
only produce two books by English authors in this first part of the
seventeenth century which fall properly under the class of novels or
romances; and of these one is written in Latin. This is the Mundus Alter
and Idem of Bishop Hall, an imitation of the later and weaker volumes
of Rabelais. A country in Terra Australis is divided into four regions,
Crapulia, Virginia, Moronea, and Lavernia. Maps of the whole land and of
particular regions are given; and the nature of the satire, not much of
which has any especial reference to England, may easily be collected. It
is not a very successful effort."{4}