28 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



e 



visited 

 Australia. 



he has been traced to Japan, to the Moluccas, to Java, 

 and to Timor. The " old man of the sea " who never 

 spoke, who lived on fruits, whose skin was like a buffalo's, 

 and who had immense prehensile power in his legs, 

 was probably an orang-outang of Borneo or Sumatra, 1 

 the ancestor of those animals whose habits have been 

 so lovingly described by Mr. Wallace. 



But there is We find then this great maritime race sailing in every 

 sea - And Y et there were definite limits to their skill 

 and to their knowledge. Far as they sailed, they never 

 seem to have felt themselves at home on the open ocean. 

 Their writers even exaggerate the old superstitious dread 

 of its perils. "The Ocean," wrote* Edrisi about 1150, 

 " encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, 

 and all beyond is unknown. No one has been able to 

 verify anything concerning it, on account of its difficult 

 and perilous navigation, its great obscurity, its profound 

 depth, and frequent tempests ; through fear of its mighty 

 fishes and its haughty winds, there is no mariner who 

 dares to enter into its deep waters ; if any have done so, 

 they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of departing 

 from them." 2 Though they rejected Ptolemy's doctrine 

 of a landlocked Indian Ocean, they declared it impossible 

 to sail further South than Sofala or Madagascar or Zanzi- 

 bar ; so thick and so mountainous became the sea, and 

 so full of monstrous things. 3 And though they knew 

 Sumatra, and Java, and perhaps Timor, and though they 

 must have shared whatever knowledge may have been 

 possessed by the Malays or Hindus, there seems no evidence 

 that they had heard of Australia. Sinbad the Sailor 

 knew a good deal about the orang-outang of Borneo 

 or Sumatra, and he had heard about the great bird of 

 Madagascar ; but there is no reason to believe that he 

 ever faced the Kangaroo. 



Still more interesting to us are the voyages of the Chinese. 

 From time immemorial the Chinese were famous navi- 



Chinese 

 traded to 

 Java. 



1 Beazley, vol. i. p. 448. 



2 Quoted in Young's Columbus, vol. i. p. 41. 



3 Rainaud, p. 104. 



