OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 649 



substances or in the physiological phenomena of vital or- 

 ganisms, gradually unveils a world of wonders, of which we 

 have scarcely reached the threshold. 



The Sandwich Islands, Papua or New Guinea, and some 

 portions of New Holland, were all discovered in the early half 

 of the sixteenth century.* These discoveries prepared the way 

 for those of Cabrillo, Sebastian Vizcaino, Mendafia and Quiros, 

 whose Sagittaria is Tahiti, and whose Archipelago del Espiritu 

 Santo is the same as the New Hebrides of Cook.f Quiros was 

 accompanied by the bold navigator who subsequently gave his 

 name to the Torres Straits. The Pacific no longer appeared as 

 it had done to Magellan, a desert waste ; it was now animated 

 by islands, which, however, for want of exact astronomical ob- 

 servations, appeared to have no fixed position, but floated from 

 place to place over the charts. The Pacific remained for a 

 long time the exclusive theatre of the enterprises of the 

 Spaniards and Portuguese. The important South Indian 

 Malayan Archipelago, dimly described by Ptolemy, Cosrcas, 

 and Polo, unfolded itself in more distinct outlines after Albu- 

 querque had established himself in 1511 in Malacca, and after 

 the expedition of Anton Abrcu. It is the special merit of the 

 classical Portuguese historian, Barros, the cotemporary of 

 Magellan and Canioens, to have so truly recognised the phy- 



* Gaetano discovered one of the Sandwich Islands in 1542. Kespect- 

 ing the voyage of Don Jorge de Menezes (1526) and that of Alvaro 

 de Saavedra (1528), to the Ilhas de Papuas, see Barros da Asia, dec. 

 iv. liv. i. cap. 16; and Navarrete, t. v. p. 125. The "Hydrography" 

 of Joh. Eotz (1542), which is preserved in the British Museum, and has 

 been examined by the learned Dalrymple, contains outlines of New 

 Holland ; as does also the collection of maps of Jean Valard of Dieppe 

 (1552), for the first knowledge of which we are indebted to M. Coquebert 

 Monbret. 



t After the death of Mendana, his wife, Dona Isabela Baretos, a 

 woman distinguished for personal courage and great mental endowments, 

 undertook in the Pacific the command of the expedition which did not 

 terminate until 1596 (Essai polit. sur la Nouv. Esp., t. iv. p. 111). 



Quiros practised in his ships the distillation of fresh from salt water, 

 on a considerable scale, and his example was followed in several instances 

 (Xavarrete, t. i. p. liii). The entire operation, as I have elsewhere 

 shown on the testimony of Alexander of Aphrodisias, was known as 

 early as the third century of our era, although it was not then practised 

 in ships. 



