46 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



have visited Java, and that the distances of the place 

 mentioned must be measured not from Chamba but from 

 Java. And hence the notion arose and persisted that 

 Marco had voyaged from China to India by a route that 

 Locach and had brought him to lands in the Latitude of Western 



Beach were Australia or Tasmania. If we measure our distances 



not 



Australia but from Chamba or Cochin China, the story at once becomes 



Java iviinor intelligible. Locac, the land of gold and elephants, 



was not was not part of the great Southern continent ; it was 



Groote" 1 ' * P art ^ Siam or Cambodia. Java Minor was not Tasmania 



Eiland but or Groote Eiland ; it was Sumatra. It was hence that 



he sailed one hundred and fifty miles to the islands of 



Nocuveran and Angamanain the Nicobar Islands, and the 



Andamans where lived the dog-headed men of Arabian 



legend, and thence a thousand miles South- West to Ceylon. 



Thus we have to notice both what Marco Polo said, 



and what he was thought to have said. For both what 



he said, and what he was thought to have said, are important 



facts in our story. We learn from him that the merchants 



Marco Polo of China, like the merchants of India and of Arabia, traded 



of 1 l d and thing with the S P ice Islan ds and with Java, and that there 



South of prevailed a vague and inaccurate conception of Java, 



map-makers which declared it to be the greatest island in the world. 



thought that Marco had nothing to tell of lands Southward of Java. 



he had 



described the But his words were misunderstood, and it was believed 



Southern that he had described, and had even visited, a continent 

 and islands in the far South, which geographers of the 

 sixteenth century identified with the Terra Incognita 

 of ancient belief, and which Dutch navigators of the 

 seventeenth century thought they had actually found 

 in Eendrachtsland. 



