2 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY 



so much by the voyages of discoverers as by the persistent 

 delineations of a great Southern continent by the map makers. 

 The idea of this conjectural continent probably arose at a very 

 early date, and when there was much excuse for such a view ; 

 but it was retained with extraordinary pertinacity throughout 

 several centuries, being held long after the voyages of many 

 navigators had disproved the existence of parts and thrown 

 strong doubt on the accuracy of the whole conception. 



Ortelius, in his ' Typus orbis terrartim,' published in 1570, 

 boldly draws the coast of ' Terra australis nondum cognita ' 

 round the world and well to the north, even crossing the 

 Tropic of Capricorn in two places. The editions of Mercator 

 follow this delineation pretty exactly down to the one published 

 by Hondius in Amsterdam in 1623, and although the famous 

 map of the world prepared for Hakluyt in 1599 has the merit 

 of omitting the Southern continent as unauthenticated, the 

 fictitious coastline continued to appear in later maps and 

 naturally attracted the attention of enterprising navigators. 



There are three legends on the Southern continent of 

 Ortelius's map : one is to the effect that it is named by some 

 the Magellanic Region ; the second tells us that the Portuguese 

 called the part south of the Cape '■ Psittacorum regio ' (region 

 of parrots), because of the incredible number of these birds ; 

 and the third, opposite to Java, refers to Marco Polo and 

 Varthema for statements of very extensive land to the south. 

 At this time a fanciful idea prevailed among cartographers that 

 there must be a great mass of land to the south to balance the 

 known land to the north. 



The earliest references to the climatic conditions of the 

 Antarctic Regions are perhaps to be found in the statement 

 of Amerigo Vespucci ; this famous person acted as pilot of a 

 Portuguese expedition which, after surveying the coast of Brazil 

 in 1 50 1, is supposed to have sailed to the south and to have 

 sighted the land of South Georgia, of which Vespucci remarks : 

 ' A rocky coast without any port or inhabitants. I believe this 

 was because the cold was so great that no one in the fleet 

 could endure it.' Another curious indication of the same 



