84 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



the straits, and are unable to get back again for a fort- 

 night." It is easy to believe that both natives and Portu- 

 guese feared to embark upon this ferocious current. 1 And 

 this may help to explain the strange ignorance of the South 

 coast of Java, which is a matter of singular importance in 



Couto. our study. " The South coast," writes Diego do Couto, 

 another Portuguese chronicler, about 1570, " is not fre- 

 quented by us, and its bays and ports are not known ; but 

 the North coast is much frequented and has many good 

 ports." 2 According to this writer, then, the Portuguese 

 knew that Java was an island, and had a vague idea of the 

 contour of its Southern coast ; but there their knowledge 

 ended. 



Linschoten. Still more remarkable is the testimony of Linschoten, the 

 famous Dutch traveller, who visited the Far East at the end 

 of the sixteenth century, and wrote the book that first put 

 into Dutch and English minds the idea of an eastern com- 

 mercial empire. He was a very industrious and careful 

 inquirer, and got, no doubt, the very best information 

 that could be got from Portuguese who had spent their lives 

 in those seas. And this is what he wrote of Java : " This 

 island beginneth under seven degrees on the South side, 

 and runneth East and by South 150 miles long (=600 

 English miles), but, touching the breadth, it is not found, 

 because as yet it is not discovered, nor by the inhabitants 

 themselves well known. Some think it to be firm land and 

 parcel of the country called Terra /mrogm'ta, which, being so, 

 should reach from that place to the Capo de Bona Sperance, 

 but as yet it is not certainly known, and therefore it is 

 accounted an island " ; and he prints a map that makes 

 an island with North coast bravely carved into capes and 

 bays, and strewn with the names of towns, but with the 

 South coast a smooth curve, unbroken by capes and 

 bays and without a single name. 3 That is to say, if we 



1 Cf. " Java " in Encyclopedia Britannica. 



2 Quoted by Collingridge, p. 194. 



3 See map, p. 85. Away to the South he has a continent marked 

 " Beach provincia aurifera," i.e. like Mercator and Ortelius he thinks 

 it necessary to find a place for Marco Polo's Locac or Beach, and, 

 like them, has no knowledge of Australia. 



