14 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



seemed to have been reached at last, on 3Oth April, 1606. Good 

 harbourage was afforded by the GRAN BAYA DE SAN FELIPE Y 

 SANTIAGO (Saints Philip and James), otherwise the Port of VERA 

 CRUZ (True Cross), thus going one better than Mendano with his 

 Santa Cruz (Holy Cross). On the banks of the JORDAN RIVER, 

 at the head of the bay, the site for the great colonial city, the 

 NEW JERUSALEM was selected. The country was at first called the 

 Land of ESPIRITU SANTO (Holy Ghost), but as Quiros became con- 

 vinced that itwas part of the great Southern Continent, he expanded 

 the title to AUSTRALIA DEL ESPIRITU SANTO,* and took formal posses- 

 sion, in the name of his Sovereign, of " all lands then seen, and still 

 to be seen, as far as the South Pole." The grandiose names 

 bestowed illustrate not only the innate piety but also the weakness 

 for superlatives which characterised the Spaniard of the seventeenth 

 century. 



It has been argued (e.g-> by the late Cardinal Moran) that 

 Quiros, with three ships under his command, could not have spent 

 five weeks at the Island of Santo without discovering that it was no 

 part of a continent. The fact remains that he did believe it to be 

 continental, although from the first Torres did not agree with him. 

 Quiros approached the island predisposed to believe as he did. 

 The elaborate ceremony which marked his stay, including the 

 nomination of municipal officers, the erection of a votive church 

 and the inauguration of an order of Knighthood of the Holy Ghost, 

 sufficiently attested the sincerity of his belief. The ceremonies 

 and the hopes to which they testified were, indeed, as Sir Clements 

 Markham observed, in the light of our present knowledge, not a 

 little pathetic. 



In after years the conviction obsessed him, till he besought his 

 King and the world to believe that he had added to the Spanish 

 Crown a territory of hardly less importance than that gained by 

 the discoveries of Columbus. He died, broken-hearted, shouting 

 this belief into deaf ears. 



The argument that Quiros had time enough to ascertain that 

 Santo was an island is sufficiently answered by the fact now clearly 

 discernible from the narrative of Bermudez, that the exploration 

 which took place during the five weeks was confined to the " Gran 

 Baya " and its environs, and that Quiros, in the flagship, was never 

 outside of the bay until the day when he finally departed from it, 

 to be driven out of sight of land and separated from his two con- 

 sorts. Unexpected confirmation of this fact is supplied by the 

 CHART OF THE GRAN BAYA (brought to light as recently as 1878) 

 signed by PRADO, which shows so many anchorages inside the bay 

 that it may easily be believed they account for as many of the 



1 Markham supports the view that the name should read as it sometimes does, 

 spelling in the seventeenth century being capricious Austrialia, a claim to Austria 

 being signified in one of the titles of the King of Spain. 



