THE VOYAGE OF TORRES 197 



S. Lat. There is all over it an archipelago of islands '' Very large 

 without number, by which we passed, and at the end of thtTscnith- 

 the nth degree the bank became more shoal. There ward." 

 were very large islands, and there appeared more to the 

 Southward ; they were inhabited by black people, very 

 corpulent and naked ; their arms were lances, arrows, 

 and clubs of stone, ill fashioned." Apparently these 

 words describe the passage of the straits, and one must 

 imagine that among the very large islands to the Southward 

 was Cape York. The inexplicable marvel is that there 

 is no word to hint that a continent was seen, or even 

 looked for ! And yet Torres had seen the maps of Mercator 

 and Ortelius and Wytfliet, and he had journeyed with 

 Quiros ! 



Thus unsatisfyingly Torres wrote his account of the Torres' 

 first recorded voyage through the Strait in 1606. The generally 

 second recorded voyage was that by Cook in 1770. The unknown 

 account of Torres was not published by the Spaniards, ^ ^ 

 and the fact that he had passed through the Strait was 

 forgotten. Spain's day of exploration had reached its 

 sunset. Why point new paths to the English and the 

 Dutch r The voyagers of those nations had no knowledge 

 of Torres' exploit. To them, for another century and 

 a half, the existence of the Strait remained as " uncertain " 

 as it had been to Mercator and Ortelius. Then in the 

 I76o's Alexander Dalrymple obtained a copy of the pamph- 

 let of Arias, saw that a strait had been passed, and that 

 it ought to be called by Torres' name. When Cook sailed 

 on his first great voyage in 1769, his passenger, Mr. Joseph 

 Banks, had been supplied by Dalrymple with this informa- 

 tion, and it fell to Cook *o prove with decisiveness the 

 truthfulness of his predecessor, and to give the detail 

 which this predecessor had omitted. 



