86 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



It seems 



unlikely 



that 



Portuguese 



or Spaniards 



would visit 



Australia. 



whatever suspicious about it. It is what we should have 

 expected. The number of Portuguese and Spaniards in the 

 Far East was exceedingly small. The harvest of spices 

 was great, and the few labourers, with both hands full of 

 most precious stuff in the world, had no time to spare for 

 any other business save the entirely necessary business of 

 fighting the natives and fighting one another. There was 

 little motive for further exploration, and little possibility 

 of undertaking it. They had neither ships nor men to 

 spare. Nor was it in the least likely that the ordinary 

 voyages, either of Portuguese or Spaniards, would lead 



PART OF SEBASTIAN CABOT'S MAP. (From Jomard's Collection.) 



to the accidental discovery of Australia. The Portuguese 

 sailed from the Cape to the Moluccas by a track that hugged 

 the Eastern coast of Africa. It was not till the Dutch in 

 the early seventeenth century struck Eastward from the 

 Cape on an entirely new track that the discovery of 

 the Western coast of Australia became likely. As for the 

 Spaniards, they sailed from Mexico and aimed straight at 

 the Moluccas or the Philippines, with winds that were very 

 unlikely to take them to the South of New Guinea. The 

 route by the Straits of Magellan had appeared so frightful 

 to the first voyagers by reason of its length and desolation, 

 that they had doubted that they would ever have suc- 

 cessors ; and, in fact, it was abandoned after the second 

 disastrous voyage of Del Cano in 1524. And from Peru no 

 ships sailed Westward till Mendana's voyage of 1567, the 



