WAS AUSTRALIA KNOWN? 115 



to study give the North coast of Java with geographical 

 features, and with names in plenty. The island is square 

 built, and its figure is singularly unlike reality. Detailed 

 information is given of the West coast, which is made 

 almost as long as the North coast. To the East of Java 

 we note, as in the map of Sebastian Cabot, a gulf in 

 which are the two little islands of Bali and Lomboc. 



X \ X XX \ 



PART OF JEAN ROTZ'S CHART, 1542. (In the British Museum.) 



On the gulf are written the Portuguese words which 

 the French copyist has, it seems, been unable to translate 

 Anda ne barcha 1 : "no boats go here "; words that remind 

 us of the statement of the Portuguese writer, Barros, that 

 the natives say that " whoever shall proceed beyond these 

 straits will be hurried away by strong currents, so as never 

 to be able to return ; and for this reason they never attempt 

 to navigate it.'.' But when we pass Eastward to the island 

 of Sumbava an amazing thing takes place. Sumbava is 

 drawn, not as an island, but as the tip of a gigantic con- 

 tinent stretching far away down to the South. In one 

 of the maps, which is probably the earliest, this continent 



1 Mr. Collingridge first noticed these words, which seem to prove 

 that these maps are French copies of a lost Portuguese original. 



