THE AUSTRALIAN STATION. 151 



important possession, a country as English as England itself, tempered only by a slight 

 colonial flavour. Here Jack will find himself at home, whether in the fine streets of 

 Melbourne, or the older and more pleasant city of Sydney, with its beautiful surroundings. 



When the seventeenth century was in its early youth, that vast ocean which stretches 

 from Asia to the Antarctic was scarcely known by navigators. The coasts of Eastern 

 Africa, of India, and the archipelago of islands to the eastward, were partially explored; 

 but while there was a very strong belief that a land existed in the southern hemisphere, 

 it was an inspiration only based on probabilities. The pilots and map-makers put down, 

 as well as they were able, the discoveries already made ; must there not be some great 

 island or continent to balance all that waste of water which they were forced to place 

 on the southern hemisphere ? Terra Australis, " the Southern Land," was therefore in a 

 sense discovered before its discovery, just as the late Sir Roderick Murchison predicted 

 gold there before Hargreaves found it.* 



In the year 1606, Pedro Fernando de Quiros started from Peru on a voyage of 

 discovery to the westward. He found some important islands, to which he gave the 

 name " Australia del Espiritu Santo," and which are now believed to have been part of 

 the New Hebrides group. The vessel of his second in command became separated in 

 consequence of a storm, and by this Luis vas Torres in consequence reached New Guinea 

 and Australia proper, besides what is now known as Torres Straits, which channel separates 

 them. The same year a Dutch vessel coasted about the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it is 

 to the persistent efforts of the navigators of Holland that the Australian coasts became 

 well explored. From 1616, at intervals, till 1644, they instigated many voyages, the 

 leading ones of which were the two made by Tasman, in the second of which he 

 circumnavigated Australia. " New Holland " was the title long applied to the western 

 part of Australia sometimes, indeed, to the whole country. 



The voyages of the Dutch had not that glamour of romance which so often attaches 

 to those of the Spanish and English. They did not meet natives laden with evidences 

 of the natural wealth of their country, and adorned by barbaric ornaments. On the 

 contrary, the coasts of Australia did not appear prepossessing, while the natives were 

 wretched and squalid. Could they have known of its after-destiny, England might not 

 hold it to-day. When Dampier, sent out by William III. more than fifty years afterwards, 

 re-discovered the west coast of Australia, he had little to record more than the number 

 of sharks on the coast, his astonishment at the kangaroos jumping about on shore, and 

 his disgust for the few natives he met, whom he described as "the most unpleasant- 

 looking and worst-featured of any people " he had ever encountered. 



Nearly seventy years elapsed before any other noteworthy discovery was made in regard 

 to Australia. In Captain Cook's first voyage, in 1768, he explored and partially surveyed 

 the eastern part of its coasts, and discovered the inlet, to which a considerable notoriety 

 afterwards clung, which he termed Botany Bay, on account of the luxuriant vegetation 



* It is stated that an old man, named Macgregor, had long before been in the habit of bringing once a 



year to Sydney small pieces of gold, which he always sold to a jeweller there, and also that a convict ha'l 



been whipped for having lumps of gold in his possession prior to the above. Hargreaves' claim rests both on 

 the actual amount discovered, and on his publishing the fact at once. 



