8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



certain that De Ouir was not the discoverer of the real continent ; that his " Aus- 

 trialia del lisfiiritu Santo" is the largest island of the group now called the New 

 Hebrides, and that the real Australian Continent had been discovered more than half 

 a century- before his time, although, for reasons of State, its discovery was kept as far 

 as possible secret. It is nevertheless true that the discoveries of De Ouir led to the 

 subsequent explorations of the Dutch, of De Bougainville and of Cook, and that, in the 

 words of Dalrymple, 'The discovery of the Southern Continent, ichcncvcr and by whom- 

 soever it may be completely effected, is in justice due to his immortal name.'" 



De Quiros inherited his zeal in the cause of exploration from his old leader, 

 Alvaro Mendafta de Neyra, who had cruised about in these mysterious seas as early as 

 1567. In that year he left Callao, and steering east discovered the Solomon Group, 

 and sailed round San Christoval and other neighbouring islands. He was in the same 

 latitude as the channel through which Torres afterwards worked his passage, and which 

 is now named after him, and within a few days' sail of the shores of the great Aus- 

 tralian Continent. Mendafla appears to have had some suspicion that greater discoveries 

 than he had yet made remained behind, for in the flamboyant account of his voyage, 

 which he gave the Court on his return to Spain, he made an earnest request for a 

 ship to prosecute further researches. Nearly thirty years passed away before his solicita- 

 tions were successful, but when at last he sailed, in 1595, he took De Quiros with him. 



Mendafla on his voyage reached the Marquesas Islands, but was unable to find the 

 territories he had touched at so many years before. After much suffering and privation, 

 and long-continued unsuccessful search, he succumbed eventually to the anxiety and dis- 

 appointment which supervened on his failure to realise his ambition, bequeathing to De 

 Quiros, who succeeded him in the command of his expedition, a similar fate. 



Worn out with the hardships of the voyage, and working his vessel' with a crew of 

 grisly skeletons, De Quiros at length succeeded in making Manila, the capital of the 

 Philippine Islands, and undismayed by the perils of the past found his way thence to 

 the Court of Spain, where he petitioned King Philip the Third to grant him men and 

 ships to discover a still newer world than that given to Ferdinand and Isabella by 

 Columbus, of whom in so singular a way he was to emulate the unfulfilled renown. 

 For nearly thirty years he advocated the search for the Southern Land, and it is only 

 necessary to read any one of the many petitions that bear his name to see how com- 

 pletely he identified himself with the one great object of his life-time. He ever 

 persistently maintained, and sought to prove by many arguments, that the Southern Conti- 

 nent really existed. Again and again he importuned the Spanish Court to give him a 

 chance, only one single chance, to make good his promises of wealth and fame, to 

 present his country with a continent, and at last his importunity prevailed. 



De Quiros started for Lima with letters royal instructing Don Luis de Velasco, the 

 Viceroy of Peru, to give him men and ships, and with a letter from the Pope com- 

 manding all good Christians to assist him. A year of busy preparation, and then, amid 

 the ringing of bdls and the prayers of the pious people of Callao, his three vessels dis- 

 appeared bdow the western horizon to plunge among the unknown terrors of that fascina- 

 ting ocean which to the old-time mariner was a limbo of all things weird or wonderful. 



Island after island is seen and named; for the first time the coral-growth is noted 



