4io 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



What was Cook's conception of New Holland as he, 

 nrst f Europeans, sailed towards its Eastern coast ? 

 i All the maps founded mainly on Tasman's showed a 

 \ continuous coastline on the North, on the West, and on the 

 j South as far as the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis. 

 The huge vacancy Eastward of those islands and of Cape 

 York was broken only by Quiros's Espiritu Santo, and 

 Tasman's Van Diemen's Land. To the North was New 

 Guinea, known Eastward only as far as New Britain 

 on the one side and Cape York on the other. What were 

 the relations of these coasts to one another ? There were 

 two ways of thinking, one " dry" and the other "wet." 

 These various lands were either one continent, or they 

 were an archipelago of islands. " It is most evident," 

 Campbell, representing the dry school, had written in 1744, 

 " that New Guinea, Carpentaria, New Holland, Van 

 Diemen's Land, and the countries discovered by Quiros 

 make all one continent." " In this immense stretch of 

 land," de Brosses, representative of the wet school, had 

 written in 1756, " we are acquainted only with some parts 

 of the coast lying separated from each other, without being 

 able to affirm whether they compose one continent or 

 (as is more likely) they are large islands, separated from 

 each other by canals or arms of the sea, the narrowest 

 of which have been supposed by navigators to be the 

 mouths of rivers. . . . Neither are we yet assured if New 

 Holland joins New Guinea on the North, or Van Diemen's 

 Land on the South. ... In running along the Eastern 

 coast of the country towards the Equator, we find the 

 Austral land of the Holy Ghost, discovered by Quiros. 

 But all this vast interval lying between Leeuwin and 

 Quiros's discovery is so little known that we cannot tell 

 what part of it is land, and what part is sea." De Brosses 

 is an agnostic ; he does not know ; but he inclines to 

 the wet theory rather than to the dry theory.. But, 

 as Cook points out, the maps which were published in 

 de Brosses' volumes are not agnostic at all ; they are dog- 

 matic, and dogmatic in a curiously irrational' way. Van 

 Diemen's Land and the Austral Land of the Holy Ghost 



