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.