WAS AUSTRALIA KNOWN? 129 



Portuguese map in the same Latitude. And yet, in spite 

 of these similarities in detail, my mind remains clouded 

 by a doubt. These map-makers knew too much. If 

 they had been contented to tell me that they were ac- 

 quainted with King's Sound and Houtman's Abrolhos, 

 I should probably have believed them. But when they 

 go on to say that they are equally well acquainted with 

 a " Bay of Rivers " eight degrees South of Cape Leeuwin, 

 with an " Isle of Giants " off the West coast of Australia, 

 and with the harbours of Tasmania and New Zealand, 

 I begin to think once more that we are studying these maps 

 in the wrong spirit. In order to do justice to their merit, 

 we should regard them not as prosaic records of historical 

 facts, but as brilliant geographical romances, though the But the 

 brilliant geographic imagination may possibly have had ma 

 a fact or two to work upon. Let us crown their art with geographic 

 laurel ; but let us not do them the injustice of saying rc 

 that their story is true. 1 



1 These French-Portuguese maps apparently had no influence on 

 geographic conceptions and plans. The first geographer, so far as I 

 know, who identified Jave la Grande with Australia, was Dalrymple ; 

 and he did so, in 1786, with malicious intention to discredit Cook. 

 See Major's Early Voyages. 



w.A. 



