1 62 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Quiros ill. Quiros himself was desperately ill. " He took such 

 a headache from Lima that he could suffer neither sun 

 nor shade. On this malady came a spasm which caused 

 much suffering, but none of these changes sufficed to 

 finish him. For whom God wishes will live ! " Sheer 

 physical weakness disabled him from contending with 

 the riotous discontents of men impatient with every 

 day that passed without sight of a golden land. The 

 leader of the discontented was the Chief Pilot, Juan Ochoa 

 de Bilboa, whom Quiros had been compelled to take 

 against his will : " he did much injury." 



Ships sail, Quiros was sailing on the South- West course, aiming 

 ec. 1605. at ] at j tuc j e 30, where he hoped to see land. Had he been 

 able to start on the day of St. Francis (September 4th), 

 he would have reached this point by the middle of October, 

 and would have had five months of Southern summer 

 for explorations West, South-West, or North- West 

 explorations that would probably have brought him to 

 New Zealand or to Australia. But the delay of three and 

 a half months was fatal. On the 22nd of January, 1606, 

 while still only in Latitude 26, they met with " a squall 

 and showers from the South-East, and with a great swell 

 from the South." The seamen were alarmed. " Whither," 

 they said, " are they taking us, in this great Gulf in the 

 winter season ? " Provision of water was running short. 

 Quiros was sick in bed, and word reached him that the 

 Pilot and other persons in the ship had " mutinous ten- 

 Course dencies." Quiros could make no fight. The ship's course 

 changed 

 Jan. 1606. was changed to West-No'rth-West, in spite of written 



protest from Torres that " it was not a thing obvious that 

 we ought to diminish our latitude till we got beyond 30 S." 

 They now made North-West for the loth line of Latitude 

 on which lay Santa Cruz ; Quiros himself had carefully 

 " taken the sun " in that island and was certain that 

 the Latitude was 10 20'. They passed several unin- 

 habited islands, and on the I oth of February came to an 

 island with people on the beach ; at last some of the 

 " millions upon millions of natives " of whom, grumbled 

 the sailors, Quiros continually talked. He called the 



