MAGELHAEN AND CANO 9 



MAGELHAEN AND CANO 



MAGELHAEN, a Portuguese who had taken service with Spain, 

 set out with five vessels from Luzar on 2oth September, 1519. 

 After passing through the strait which now bears his name, he 

 reached the Philippine Islands, where he was killed by the natives. 

 Only one ship of his squadron returned to Europe, via the Cape 

 of Good Hope, carrying eighteen persons, all very sick. This 

 ship was the " Victoria" Captain Juan Sebastian del CANO. 

 The " Victoria " sailed via the Moluccas to Timor. Thence 

 she must have gone south-westward till " certain islands " were 

 discovered under the tropic of Capricorn. As this land, 

 according to Cano, was only 100 leagues (5 43') from Timor, 

 it is more likely to have been the continent of Australia (some- 

 where between Onslow and Carnarvon, Western Australia) than 

 Madagascar, as has been assumed by some writers. Whether 

 Cano actually landed here is uncertain, but it may be taken for 

 granted that in these days no ship could afford to neglect an 

 opportunity of landing for the purpose of taking in water. 



TORRES 



A Spanish expedition under ALVARO MENDANA DE MEYRA, 

 with PEDRO FERNANDEZ DE QUIROS as second in command, sailed 

 from Callao on 9th April, 1595, and discovered the island of 

 SANTA CRUZ (lat. 11 S., long. 166 E.), where an attempt was 

 made to establish a colony. The result was a disastrous failure, 

 and Mendana's death took place soon after. WYTFLIET'S MAP 

 (1597 shows, in the same latitude as the southmost Solomon 

 Islands (10 S.), a strait dividing Nova Guinea and Terra Australis, 

 and this is actually the latitude of Torres Strait. The map has 

 a note stating that TERRA AUSTRALIS is "SEPARATED FROM NEW 

 GUINEA by a narrow strait. Its shores are hitherto but little 

 known, since, after one voyage and another, that route has been 

 deserted, and seldom is the country visited unless when sailors are 

 driven there by storms." In this harmless statement, there is 

 surely no ground for Collingridge's accusation of fraud on the part 

 of the Dutch, or of a desire to filch the credit of the discovery of 

 the strait. Collingridge adduces a good many fragments of 

 evidence that both the Spanish and the Dutch were well aware of 

 the existence of the strait before the end of the sixteenth century, 

 but after Wytfliet's admission there was a growing tendency on the 

 part of the Dutch to deny the existence of such a strait, and 

 several failures on their part to verify it only strengthened this 

 doubt. They doubted more and more until the question was 

 finally settled by Cook in 1770. 



1 The Discovery of Australia, by George Collingridge, 4to, Sydney, 1895, p. 218. 



