THE VOYAGE OF TORRES 195 



geographers had said that its existence was " uncertain," 

 giving no word of argument either for belief, or for un- 

 belief. Wytfliet had said there was a strait, and had 

 drawn it ; but again without one word of evidence. Yet 

 Torres simply " coasted along to Westward on the South 

 side," without any reference either to strait expected 

 or to strait found. And he sailed through this strait 

 a strait in which, Moresby says, " a ship is never safe out 

 of the beaten track, the lurking dangers are so many" 1 

 and all we get from him are a few bald phrases about 

 " many islands " and " a reef of shoals," and " great 

 currents." 



It seems difficult to draw the route of Torres with any The route of 

 exactness. His few sentences seem extremely obscure, Torres - 

 and some of them seem irreconcilable with the modern 

 map. The facts that we know certainly are those given, 

 not by the narrative of Torres, but by the maps sent 

 by de Prado. On the i8th of July, after battling for 

 five days with extensive and very dangerous reefs, Torres 

 anchored in the Bay at the extreme South of New Guinea, 

 which Moresby visited in 1873, and called Jenkins Bay. 

 Torres called the land " the land of Buenaventura," and 

 he, or his artist, drew a map the features of which can 

 be easily recognised. 2 On the loth of August they anchored 

 eighty miles Westward in a Bay which they called the 



1 Moresby writes : " Torres Straits are about two hundred miles 

 long with a least breadth of eighty miles between Cape York and New 

 Guinea. At this part the depth of water nowhere exceeds twelve 

 fathoms, but elsewhere in the Straits the depth is somewhat greater, 

 but rarely exceeds twenty fathoms. The entire surface of the Straits 

 is strewn with coral reefs and sandbanks and islands, the larger of which 

 are of volcanic origin. The smaller are low white islands of coral 

 formation, scarcely raised ten feet above the sea level. West of Cape 

 York a series of lofty volcanic islands, succeeded by lines of coral 

 reefs, with very narrow channels for ships between, lie like giant stepping- 

 stones between Queensland and New Guinea, suggesting the idea that 

 New Guinea and Australia were one land." " A ship is never safe 

 in Torres Straits when out of the beaten track, the lurking dangers 

 are so many. The changes made during heavy gales in the shape of 

 rapid shifts and other accumulations of sand defy calculation, added 

 to which the sea is so discoloured by the New Guinea rivers flowing 

 down that such dangers are made imperceptible." 



? See Collingridge and Markham. 



