WAS AUSTRALIA KNOWN ? 109 



continent received confirmation from the authority of 

 Oriental travellers. "That very vast regions exist here," 

 he wrote a little lower down, " he easily believes who has 

 read Book III, Chapters XI and XII of Marcus Paulus 

 the Venetian, and who has collated them with Book VI, 

 Chapter XXVII of Ludovicus Varthema, Roman Patrician." 



It seems to me clear that Mercator's Magellanican Mercator 

 continent is the expression not of geographical information knowledge 

 but of respect to the authority of Ptolemy, of desire to but made a 

 find habitation for the names mentioned in the misinter- j^g l 

 preted passage of Marco Polo, and of belief in a certain 

 physical theory of the globe. To do justice to Mercator's 

 map we should consider it not as a statement of fact, 

 but as a guess at truth. And, after all, it was not such 

 a very bad guess. He drew an outline that was curiously 

 like the outline of the Northern coast of Australia. And 

 when he insisted that there was a great mass of land in 

 the South the conclusion of his argument at least was 

 entirely right. There was not one continent, but there 

 were two continents : Australia and the Antarctic 

 Continent, which recent exploration has shown to be 

 as big as Australia and Europe put together, 1 and with 

 mighty mountain ranges which, Mercator would have 

 argued, must greatly increase its importance as a make- 

 weight in the vast scales of the globe. 



Apart from the question of its value as evidence of 

 geographical knowledge at the time, Mercator's map 

 of 1569 is a map of singular interest in view of the later 

 development of, our story. It became the recognized 

 authority in the realm of scientific geography, the Ptolemy 

 of the New Age. A long series of later maps were, either 

 avowedly or virtually, merely later editions of the master- 

 piece. And they all tend to confirm the view that it 

 represents not a knowledge 'of facts but a clever guess at 

 truth. In fact, in the Atlas published by Mercator's Magellan 

 friend Ortelius, realities are stated with perfect plainness, ^ashfuf 

 He wrote in the Preface : "Of the fifth part (of the world), virgin, 

 situated under the South Pole, which we call Magellan, 

 1 Cf. Bruce's Polar Exploration. 



