90 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



are turned into a closed gulf, in the midst of which arc the 

 islands of Bali and Lomboc. But Java-Sumbava has no 

 South coast. And the sea to the South is one huge un- 

 broken vacancy, on which, with safety and with truthful- 

 ness, Cabot has written the words, " Unknown Sea or Land." ] 

 This was the position of the reasonable agnostic. Sebastian 

 Miinster, on the other hand and Sebastian Miinster was 

 the most famous German cosmographer of the period was 

 a dogmatic unbeliever. As to the temperate zone of the 

 South, he wrote in 1532, " you will see that in it there is 

 almost no continent of land, but merely sea and certain 

 islands." z There are later Portuguese maps of 1546 and 

 1558 that give the same view. 3 Thus we have a large number 

 of maps, both Portuguese .and Spanish, and of highest 

 authority, which assure us that there was no knowledge 

 of land South of Java. 



There is one map of this type that has singular in- 

 terest for Englishmen. In 1598-1600 Richard Hakluyt 

 published the second edition of his collection of voyages, 

 with a new map. Shakspere must have turned over its 

 leaves, for its " new map with the augmentation of 

 the Indies " came into mind when he thought of the 

 multitudinous " lines " of Malvolio's smile. 4 This map, 5 

 like the others we have noticed, makes the South Pacific 

 one huge vacant ocean, save for one interesting hint or 

 suggestion. South of Java, in the place where the North- 



1 Rainaud, p. 310. 2 Rainaud, p. 311. 3 Major, p. Ixiii. 



4 See note in Variorum Shakspere, vol. xiii. p. 208, and especially 

 the argument of Coote in New Shakspere Society Transactions, 1877-79. 

 Coote shows that the map was drawn by Mollineux, " perhaps with 

 the assistance of Hakluyt." It seems curious that, whereas Hakluyt 

 in his first edition of 1589 published Ortelius's map, with its huge 

 Magellanican continent (Hakluyt, vol. i.), in the second edition of 

 1598 he published this " new map " in which the continent disappears, 

 and there is nought South of New Guinea and Java save the short 

 S-like line. Cf. the Map of the New World dedicated to Hakluyt 

 in 1587 (Hakluyt, vol. viii. p. 272). It gives no Terra Australis. Yet in 

 1589 Hakluyt preferred to print Ortelius's map with a Terra Australis 

 occupying most of the South Pacific ! These facts seem to show 

 that the impartial geographic mind found it difficult to attain a settled 

 conviction. 



5 Hakluyt, vol. i. See p. 92. 



