

PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS 



75 



West coast of Australia. But he has no word to say of 

 land seen between Timor and the Cape. Galvano, however, 

 ex-governor of the Moluccas, writing about 1555, has the 

 following curious passage : " Beyond this island one 

 hundred leagues they discovered certain islands under "Certain 

 the Tropic of Capricorn, and further on others. All are t s he xropic of 

 peopled thenceforward ; nor did they see land except it Capricorn." 



vv :; -'.- 



MAP TO ILLUSTRATE VOYAGE OF THE Victoria FROM THE PHILIPPINES 



-might be some islets up to the Cape of Good Hope." Now, 

 if the Spaniards saw " certain islands under the Tropic of 

 Capricorn," these islands must have been near the Aus- 

 tralian coast. But we are left puzzled by this confused 

 statement of later date compared with the silence of the 

 eager note-taker on board. And so the Victoria rounded 

 the Cape, and sailed home to Spain, the first of all ships 

 to put a girdle round the world in three and a half years ! 



Thus both Portuguese and Spaniards had made a way The Portu- 

 to the " New World " which centred in the Spice Islands. 

 There was fierce strife between them; for, though the Pope, islands. 



in the 



