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.