EARLY IDEAS OF THE SOUTH 3 



nature is to be found in the conversation which the Italian 

 traveller Ludovico di Varthema, referred to by Ortelius, had 

 with the Malay captain who took him to Java in 1506. The 

 skipper knew how to steer by the compass and by a certain star 

 of the Southern hemisphere as well as by the pole-star. He 

 told Varthema of a region far beyond Java where the day only 

 lasted for four hours, and said that it was colder than any other 

 part of the world. Varthema concludes his account of the 

 conversation by saying, ' We were pleased and satisfied ' ! 



The manner in which the veil of mystery was first lifted 

 from the Southern hemisphere was naturally enough by the 

 extension of exploration along the coastlines of the Northern 

 land masses, but it was long before the facts thus ascertained 

 ceased to be distorted by cartographers. The circumnavigation 

 of the Cape by Vasco da Gama in 1497 did not extend 

 sufficiently far south to upset calculations greatly, but when 

 in 1520 Magellan discovered the strait which bears his name, 

 Tierra del Fuego, to the south, was at once seized upon as an 

 evident part of the Terra australis, and its coasts were unhesi- 

 tatingly joined to the main outline of that continent. And 

 when Sir Francis Drake in 1577 ' came finally to the uttermost 

 part of the land towards the South Pole ; the extreme cape or 

 cliff lying nearly under 56° S., beyond which neither continent 

 nor island was to be seen ; indeed the Atlantic and the Pacific 

 Oceans here unite in the free and unconfined open,' his dis- 

 covery seems to have been completely misrepresented, and his 

 accounts were garbled in such a manner as to have taken 

 centuries to unravel. 



How complete was the ignorance of Southern conditions at 

 the commencement of the seventeenth century can be gathered 

 from the voyage of Quiros. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros was 

 a Portuguese pilot in the Spanish service ; favoured by the 

 Pope Clement VIII., he obtained an order from the King of 

 Spain, Philip III., to prosecute a voyage to annex the South 

 Polar continent and to convert its inhabitants to the true faith. 

 He sailed from Callao in 1605 and steered to the W.S.W., but 

 after proceeding a month on this course his heart failed him. 



