88 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Maps of one 

 type also 

 confess 

 ignorance of 

 everything 

 south of 

 Java. 



me good reason for entertaining a strong sceptical prejudice 

 in respect to arguments that seek to prove that the Aus- 

 tralian coast was well known. 1 



If from contemporary writings we turn to contemporary 

 maps, we find much to confirm us in our unbelief. Many 

 of these maps seem to correspond to the narratives with 

 reasonable exactness, setting down the discoveries and the 

 conjectures of which we have been told, and setting down 

 little more. Thus we have a series of charts made by 

 Francisco Rodriguez, 2 one of the pilots of D'Abreu's famous 

 expedition of 1511-12. They give a fairly correct rough 

 sketch of the string of islands from Sumatra to Timor, 

 showing the South coasts as well as the North coasts, and 

 with open sea to the South. They are, I think, the only 

 charts that draw the South coasts of the islands in a way 

 that suggests knowledge. Another chart of about 1517, 

 by Pedro Reinel, gives the same string of islands, with the 

 curious difference that their length is made to extend not 

 East and West, but North and South. 3 They seem to show 

 ignorance of the South coasts, and also to show a tendency 

 to fill the unknown vacancy with land. The Spanish map 

 of Ribero (1529) shows an opposite tendency. The North 

 coasts only of the islands from Java to Timor are given. 

 On the South they have no outline, but fade into the ocean 

 on which sails Magellan's ship Victoria on its way home 

 " from Maluco " ; and the ocean extends shoreless to the 

 bottom of the map. 4 The famous map of Sebastian Cabot 

 of I544 5 has similar characteristics. It gives the North 

 coast of the islands from Java to Timor with details that 

 are copious though not always correct. Java and Sumbava 

 are supposed to be one island. The impracticable straits 



1 I am especially impressed by the apparent complete ignorance of 

 Galvano, the ex-Governor of the Moluccas, who wrote his Discoveries 

 of the World before 1555. If Australia had been discovered he must 

 have heard of the discovery, and he gave so much information about 

 the rich islands which he knew that it seems impossible to believe that 

 he concealed knowledge of a barren territory in the South. 



2 See map, p. 89. 



3 Cf. Hamy's L'CEuvre geographique dc Reinel. See map, p. 87. 

 * See map, p. 87. 6 See map, p. 6. 



