in 



. / ( '.V / 'A' .//../ .SY, / //. /. I \S TRA TED. 



the hollow of his palm, but he relaxed his grasp and never regained it. It was a 

 great thing to lose a fifth part of the known world ; and he did not lose it hy the 

 fortune of war but by the misfortune of being ignorant of its value. To him. however, 

 belongs the credit of having traced the northern and western and part of the southern 

 roasts, from Cape York to Cape Arid ;. but the tropical islands had more fascination for 

 him. as they had for the English Dampier, than the bleak and desert coast-line he 

 explored. Hence as far as the Dutch were concerned the Continent remained open for 

 exploitation a century and a half from the date of I)e Ouir's historical voyage in search 

 of a Southern Land. The choice was like that of the leaden casket in the old fable the 

 greatest prize was hidden in the least, valuable exterior. Nor could the sturdy sailors of 

 Holland have done much with Australia at the time of their first visit even had they 

 tried to occupy it ; for, as we shall hereafter see, although the commerce of Australia had 

 its origin in the exportation of sealskins and whale oil, it received its greatest impetus 

 from the discovery of the fitness of large tracts of the Continent for the growth of fine 

 wool, and the time for that trade had not yet arrived. 



The ivory and spices which gave the East Indies their value in the eyes of the 

 Portuguese Australia was lacking in, and the gold which made South America worth the 

 shedding of Spanish blood had not yet been discovered in the "New Atlantis" of the 

 South. Hence the romance which clings around Australia's early history is the romance 

 of effort rather than of achievement, a romance of old ships and old sailors, of mutinies 

 on the high seas and collisions with natives, of bloodshed and water-famine, of hope 

 deferred and heroic endeavour ; and then a great blank, as if the vision of the Terra 

 . histra/is -of the robust days of old had faded from men's minds for a season, to re-ap- 

 pear in a more modern, a commonplace and a less poetic guise. 



It is impossible to say when the existence of Bacon's " New Atlantis," like that of 

 the old "Atlantis" of Plato's philosophic dream, was first dimly suspected. Perhaps from 

 the earliest period of the world's history. Even the Ptolemaic theory of the configura- 

 tion of the earth did not shut out from the minds of the Ancients some vague idea of 

 an unknown Terra Australia, some Ultima Tlntlc of the South, that yet remained to be 

 one day discovered ; and the early Christian Fathers discussed such hypotheses with as 

 much vigour as decision. Amongst them the venerable St. Augustine, with all the fervour 

 of strong religious conviction, wrote that " Nothing could be more absurd than to believe 

 that land, even if it existed, on the opposite side of the world could be inhabited by 

 human beings, for the Holy Scriptures made no mention of the fact, and it was 

 obviously impossible that any of the descendants of our first parents could have sailed 

 to or reached those countries without being missed." 



I he discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, not only disposed of 



such arguments, but originated also a scientific theory that some extensive territory must 



necessity exist on the opposite side of the globe by way of counterbalance ; and the 



.hinese. who were in all probability the earliest of the discoverers of the great Terra 



* confirmed this theory in a tale of a vast but unknown Southern Land. Towards 



: close of the thirteenth century Marco Polo visited China, being the first European 



vhom any record exists who had achieved such a journey, and he supports the belief 



that the Chinese knew positively of the existence of Australia, although it is probable 



