EARLY DISCOVERIES. 



\ 



and described; but for months no large territory looms in sight. It gladdens the anxious 

 watcher's eyes at last ; some verdure-covered hills appear, which grow hourly more and 

 more -distinct in all their tropical luxuriance. But there is visible no landing-place upon 

 that rocky shore, for even where a strip of dazzling sand is seen, overhung by palms 



and evergreen thickets, rolls a heavy surf. After standing 

 outward for two days, the navigators round a bold cape 

 and anchor in a wide inlet of the Bay of St. Philip and 

 St. James. There, on sheltered waters fringed by a broad 



crescent of yellow beach, the ships lie 

 at anchor the Capitana, a high-pooped 

 craft of ancient Spain from which floats 

 the ensign of De Ouir himself ; the 



Almiranta, or ad- 

 miral's ship, the 

 commander of 

 which, Luis Vaez 

 de Torres, is rather 

 a military man than 

 a sailor, and a little 

 vessel to act as a za- 

 bra, or tender. Not 

 one of these ships 

 exceeds some fifty or 

 sixty tons, in our 

 eyes they would be 

 insignificant craft in- 

 deed for so formid- 

 able a service, and 

 they were certainly 

 wretched homes for 

 crowded crews in a 

 tropical climate, in 

 which the air hung 

 like a pall of vapour 

 from the sky, and 

 the pitch boiled and 

 blistered in the seams 

 of the deck-planks. 

 It must have been 

 a proud moment 



for De Quiros when he saw before him that unbroken coast stretching as far as his eye 

 could range. Three days he had sailed past the hilly shores, and still an unvarying succes- 

 sion of bold tree-covered slopes and verdured bluffs, and then he felt assured that the Great 

 Southern Continent, his dream for nine and twenty years, was at last in very truth before him. 



TASMAX S CARPENTER LANDING AT STORM BAY. 



