WAS AUSTRALIA KNOWN ? 



107 



and those of his predecessors is that, in order to make 

 his continent as big and as heavy as possible, he has pushed 

 its coastline up much further to the North. It seems to 

 me certain that the geography is still wholly imaginary. 



As to the larger island, which ought to be Groote Eyland, 

 it turns out on closer inspection to be Marco Polo's Java 

 Minor (i.e. Sumatra) ; and Mercator tells you that the island 



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PART OF PLANCIUS'S M^p, 1594. (From Linschoten's Voyages, 1623.) 



" produces various spices never seen by Europeans, as 

 you may read in M. Paulus Venetus, Book 3, Chapter 

 13." The smaller island is Marco Polo's Pentam, an island 

 which in real life stands in the straits of Malacca. 1 Mercator 

 understood Marco Polo to mean that these islands existed 

 Southward of Java, and he therefore cut a particularly 

 big gulf in order to contain them. Another geographer, 

 Plancius, who made a map similar to that of Mercator 

 in 1594, recognized that Marco Polo's Java Minor was 



1 " The Singapore Island of our day." See discussion in Cordier's 

 Ser Marco Polo, p. 105. 



