TORRES 17 



at once future explorers would have followed different lines from 

 those now marked by history. We have already seen how this 

 report disappeared. There are indications that Robert de 

 Vaugondy had got some inkling of it, or of charts relating to it, 

 between 1752, when his map of the region showed no strait, but 

 only a " bight " on the western side (the Dutch idea), and 1756, 

 when his map showed the strait. The report was, in fact, dis- 

 covered at Manila : in 1762, when a copy fell into the hands of 

 Alexander Dalrymple, who printed the Spanish text in Edinburgh 

 in 1772, as an appendix to his Charts and Memoirs. He had not, 

 apparently, mastered its contents, or grasped its significance, in 

 1770. Years later, he translated it into English, and permitted 

 Captain James Burney to print the translation in his Discoveries in 

 the South Seas in 1806. Dalrymple, in fact, only knew of Torres' 

 achievement at second hand, and chiefly through the references 

 of Arias, when Cook sailed in the " Endeavour " in 1768. 



Up to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the references 

 to the voyages of Torres, second hand and unauthenticated as they 

 were, contained in Arias' Memorial (written between 1614 and 

 1641) were practically all that were known to the world of Torres 

 and Torres Strait. 



The last, and not the least important, of the sources of informa- 

 tion regarding Torres have come to light as recently as 1878. 

 These are CHARTS signed by PRADO, and purporting to have 

 been drawn during his voyage with Torres. It appears that 

 Napoleon I looted the treasures of the Spanish Archives in a 

 wholesale fashion and sent them to Paris. " There," says 

 Collingridge," " they were found some years ago by a friend of 

 mine, who caused them to be restored to their original owners, and 

 acquainted me with their existence." They were reproduced in 

 the Bol. de la Soc. Geografica de Madrid, torn, iv, January, 1878, and, 

 with two letters of Prado, dated 24th and 25th December, 1613, 

 again reproduced by Collingridge. 1 Possibly, as Markham suggests, 

 the surveys were the work of Torres or his Sailing Master, 

 Fuentiduenas, and only the draughtsmanship is to be credited to 

 Prado ; but in any case the charts are undoubtedly authentic and in 

 accuracy of surveying bear comparison with modern Admiralty 

 work. Fortunately, Torres followed the pious custom of his time 

 in naming places discovered by him after the Saint or Saints 

 whose festivities appeared in the Calendar of the day, and thus 

 we get several important dates for which no other authority can 

 be cited. 



Our sources of information regarding Torres' important 

 voyage are, therefore, practically limited to (i) Torres' Letter to 



1 Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis in 1801, 1802 and 1803, London, 1814, vol. i, 

 p. 10. 



2 First Discovery of Australia, p. 122. 



3 The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea, Sydney, 1906, pp. 246-256. 



I 2 



