COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY., 141 



fishermen were blown by a succession of gales to Cadiz and Gyrene, the 

 Canaries, Mexico and Newfoundland. Diaz was storm-carried south- 

 ward to the Cape, where two shipwrecked mariners long afterward in- 

 duced the Dutch to settle. Columbus, Cabot and Hudson sought a 

 passage to India or China. The day comes, however, when chance gives 

 way to a systematic art of discovery. The voyage of Columbus was the 

 first where the end was deliberately aimed at and patiently worked up 

 to. Under Ferdinand the Catholic maritime discovery was raised to an 

 art. A board of eminent Spanish navigators, with Vespucci at its 

 head, sat to construct charts and trace out routes for projected voyages. 

 The primary object of Cook's first voyage was astronomical, and he was 

 scientifically equipped for discovery on that, as of course also on the 

 two later voyages, whose sole end was the one so gloriously gained. 



Prior discovery confers an indefeasible title to occupy as against any 

 other colonizing power. Misled by a false statement, a British man-of- 

 war entered the Mississippi presumably to take possession of Louisiana, 

 but turned aside on being informed of the earlier French occupation. 

 In the thirties two naval expeditions were exploring at the same time 

 in Spencer Gulf, South Australia. Though the French gracefully 

 yielded the pas to the prior English ship, they left a mark on a number 

 of -points that still bear French names. There seems to be now no 

 doubt that Brazil had been discovered and rediscovered by Spanish 

 navigators before the Portuguese carbajal set foot on it, but, owing 

 to an international agreement, the discoverers ceded their claim. 



Discovery does not necessarily issue in colonization. The more 

 or less mythical discoveries of the coasts of North America and Aus- 

 tralia in the ninth and sixteenth centuries interest the antiquarian 

 rather than the historian. They resemble the so-called anticipations 

 of scientific discoveries — Cesalpino's, of Harvey; Vico's, of Wolf and 

 Niebuhr; Swedenborg-'s, of Kant; and a host of guessers, of Darwin. 

 As proof alone is discovery in science, so only exploration is discovery in 

 geography. For lack of this essential element even well-certified dis- 

 coveries are apt to be fruitless. Tasman's frightened glimpse of New 

 Zealand and his more careful coasting of Tasmania left durable marks 

 on both countries, but only in nomenclature. They led to nothing. 

 No Dutch settlement seems ever to have been made south of New 

 Guinea; no northern nationality is more conspicuously absent among 

 the colonizers of the South Seas. The earlier Portuguese discovery of 

 the Cape of Good Hope was regarded as that of a halfway house 

 to a more distant goal; they stopped to recruit, then hurried off 

 to rich Cathay. The French left their names to a dozen headlands and 

 rivers on the coast of Western Australia, but, though they often excited 

 the suspicions of New South Wales, they made no attempt to settle. 



Discovery, to assure sovereignty over the discovered country, 



