12O 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



But (i) it 



seems 



improbable 



that voyages 



were made 



that would 



give 



knowledge 



of 



Australian 



coasts, 



and (2) it 

 seems likely 

 that these 

 maps, like 

 those of the 

 second type, 

 represent 

 voyages of 

 the 

 imagination. 



Northern, and Eastern coasts of Australia. What 

 we are asked to believe is that between 1512 and 1536 

 Portuguese and Spanish seamen sailed the whole length 

 of the West coast to Cape Leeuwin, and the whole 

 length of the East coast to Tasmania, and that they sur- 

 veyed those huge coast lines with the accuracy, if not of 

 a Cook or a Flinders, at least of a Columbus or a Vespucci. 

 Now in our contemporary narratives, written by men 

 who, like Galvano, must have known everything know- 

 able about this matter, there is no record, no hint, of a 

 single voyage of discovery on those coasts. In our con- 

 temporary maps, apart from the maps of this type, there 

 is no line that suggests knowledge of them. And every- 

 thing that we know of the ideas and habits of Portuguese 

 and Spaniards in this period makes it highly improbable 

 that these discoveries would be made. When I think 

 of the enormous difficulties of navigation on these Aus- 

 tralian coasts, of the scanty naval equipment of the handful 

 of Portuguese, who, in 1 5 1 2, had just arrived at the Moluccas, 

 and of the lack of motive for voyages of detailed and 

 scientific survey, I feel that nothing but evidence of the 

 most unanswerable nature would induce me to accept 

 those maps as representing the discovery of Australia. 



And, in the second place, while I find it very difficult 

 to believe that these maps represent the results of voyages 

 of ships, I find it very easy to believe that they represent 

 the results of voyages of imagination. We have seen 

 that at this time, owing to various reasons, it was the 

 fashion to fill vacant spaces in the South with continents 

 which were the result not of discoveries but of philoso- 

 phical speculations. When voyagers reported that they had 

 seen a few miles of land, cosmographers at once declared 

 that this land must be the tip of a continent which centered 

 in the South Pole. Tierra del Fuego was a tip of this 

 continent. New Guinea was either a tip of this same 

 continent, or an island separated from it only by a very 

 narrow strait. And there was no coastline in the world 

 that was more likely to suggest a hinterland of continent 

 than the Northern coastline of Java. When the Portuguese 



