194 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



tioned Latitude (20), which I passed one degree, and 

 would have gone further if the weather had permitted ; 

 for the ship was good. It was proper to act in this manner, 

 for these are not voyages performed every day, nor could 

 Your Majesty otherwise be properly informed." But 

 there was " no sign of land." He had not quite hit the 

 coast of Queensland. 

 Torres sails The next instruction had been to sail " North-West 



ThTs^uth 011 to 4' and thence West in search of New Guinea " ; a 

 side of New phrase which seems to suggest that Spanish knowledge 

 of the North coast of New Guinea did not extend South- 

 ward of 4. He now, therefore " stood back to the North- 

 West." Arias, writing soon after 1614, and using we 

 know not what information, says that Torres " put back 

 to the North- West and North-East up to 14, in which 

 he sighted a very extensive coast which he took for that 

 of New Guadalcanal, 1 and thence turned Westward for 

 New Guinea." Torres himself says nothing about this. 

 His statement is : " From hence (21) I stood back to 

 the North- West to 1 1^ ; there we fell in with the beginning 

 of New Guinea. I could not weather the East point, 

 so I coasted along to the Westward on the South side." 

 He found himself compelled to seek a way to Manila by 

 the South of New Guinea. 



Torres The reticence of Torres is exasperating. Those who 



have read more recent stories of navigations in the tangles 

 Eastward of New Guinea realise that he must have been 

 in a position of difficulty that could hardly be surpassed. 

 Read the story of Bougainville, and the story of Moresby, 

 and you wonder by what miraculous chance Torres found 

 his way through those seas. Yet he says not one word 

 of complaint ! And, when he " coasted along to the 

 Westward on the South side " what did he expect to 

 find ? Not one word exists to indicate that man had ever 

 sailed through the Strait to the South of New Guinea. 

 Mercator and Ortelius had drawn a strait between New 

 Guinea and their Magellanican continent ; but Mercator 

 had partially covered the strait with a pattern, and both 

 1 The largest of the Solomons. 



