EARLY DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA. SSl 



Shall we make a further step back — back to the years of Dutch 

 maritime supremacy, when Tasman circumnavigated this great 

 Terra Australis, sailing in a very roundabout way for fear of breakers 

 along the coasts and dreaded giants on land. The map bearing 

 date 1644 gives us an idea of what the southern continent was like 

 in the minds of the Dutchmen of the period. Nova Guinea is 

 included, for although Torres had passed through the Straits 18 

 years before, the Dutch either ignored the fact, had forgotten it, or 

 purposely concealed it. The western shore and the western shores 

 only of the present day York Peninsula were set down and the 

 country named Carpentaria. The eastern half of the Continent 

 was known as Terra Australis, and, as you will notice, the western 

 half, in this map, bears the name Hollandia Nova. 



The first features of " No Man's Land " being the overlapping 

 ■disputed territory between Pope Alexander's line of demarcation 

 and the extreme limit afterwards claimed by the Portugese, and 

 which became the Dutch East India line of demarcation, hence 

 the East Indies and the West Indies — the line which Phillip, the 

 first Governor of New South Wales, was instructed to observe as 

 the limit of the possessions claimed by the English Government. 



We must now take a big step back into the dark period of 

 history, when the Great Southern Continent was rising upon the 

 gaze of the world like a new moon, the greater part of whose disk 

 lies in black shadow. A period replete with the romance of bygone 

 days, when the terrors of the deep still held sway and the mariner 

 was loth to lose sight of the shore and enter the sea of darkness 

 with its dreaded currents, ever flowing south towards icy regions 

 -from which there was no return. 



1530. We are away back in the first half of the sixteenth 

 century. 



Dauphin Chart. — The map shown here is a copy of the Dauphin 

 Chart of Australia, then known as " Jave la Grande " (the Great 

 Java), a term given to it by the inhabitants of the islands to the 

 north of Australia, according to the great Venetian traveller, Marco 

 Polo. 



Australia has been called the " Land of Paradox." Now, when 

 looking on this chart, one is confronted with the greatest paradox 

 of all those hitherto contributed. Between the two lines of de- 

 marcation shown here lies the most coveted portion of the Globe, 

 a portion for which the great maritime powers fought for strenuously, 

 and this is precisely the region which up to the present day has been 

 .'going a-begging — nobody wants it. Let us hope that it will not 

 always be so, at any rate now ; if we don't take possession of it, 

 ■somebody else will. Big slices of the earth are much sought after 

 nowadays. 



