44 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



everybody that they can catch." " When you leave the 

 Island of Angamanain, and sail about I,OOO miles in a 

 direction a little South of West, you come to the Island of 

 Seilan (Ceylon), which is in good sooth the best island of 

 its size in the world. You must know that it has a compass 

 of 2,400 miles, but in old times it was greater still, for it 

 then had a circuit of about 3,600 miles, as you find in the 

 charts of the mariners of those seas." And he describes 

 its precious stones, and especially a ruby the King was 

 reported to possess, " which is the finest and biggest in 

 the world, about a palm in length and as thick as a man's 

 arm, the most resplendent object upon earth, quite free 

 from flaw and as red as fire." 



Now all this is very curious, and even amazing ! For, 

 if we take this passage as it stands in our texts, Marco 

 Polo describes a great and fertile and auriferous continent 

 called Locac, as existing some 1200 (or 750?) miles 

 between South and South-West of Java. We think 

 at once of a possible discovery of the North- West coast 

 of Australia, though we are puzzled to find mention not 

 of kangaroos but of elephants. And about 600 miles 

 South of Locac is the very large and rich island of 

 Java the Lesser, an island which Marco Polo had 

 visited and explored, having been detained there for 

 five months by contrary winds ! That is to say, the 

 famous Venetian seaman had actually visited the great 

 Southern Continent, and its adjacent islands, which in 

 fact all lay on the ordinary sea route from China to 

 Ceylon ! 



Map-makers Thus, according to our manuscripts, Marco Polo wrote, 



puTLocach or ratner spoke ; and thus he was understood by his 



Beach, and readers. In the Globe which Behaim constructed in 



where Mm r J 49 2 the Y ear when Columbus first sailed West, Java 



Australia Minor stands in the place where Tasmania existed. 1 



Mercator's map of I56p 2 drew the outline of a great 



Southern Continent in a way that suggested at least the 



possibility of vague knowledge of the North coast of 



1 Collingridge, p. 80. See Behaim's map, p. 55. 

 z See map, p. 91. 



