272 COSMOS. 



thermal substances or in the physiological phenomena of vital 

 organisms, gradually unvails a world of wonders, of which we 

 have scarcely reached the threshold. 



The Sandwich Islands, Papua or New Guinea, and some 

 portions of New Holland, were all discovered in the early half 

 of the sixteenth century.* These discoveries prepared the way 

 for those of Cabrillo, Sebastian Vizcaino, Mendaiia, and Quiros, 

 whose Sagittaria is Tahiti, and whose Archipelago del Espiritu 

 Santo is the same as the New Hebrides of Cook.f Quiros was 

 accompanied by the bold navigator who subsequently gave his 

 name to the Torres Straits. The Pacific no longer appeared 

 as it had done to Magellan, a desert waste ; it was now ani- 

 mated by islands, which, however, for want of exact astro- 

 nomical observations, appeared to have no fixed position, but 

 floated from place to place over the charts. The Pacific re- 

 mained for a long time the exclusive theater of the enterprises 

 of the Spaniards and Portuguese. The important South In- 

 dian Malayan Archipelago, dimly described by Ptolemy, Cos 

 mas, and Polo, unfolded itself in more distinct outlines after 

 Albuquerque had established himself in 1511 in Malacca, and 

 after the expedition of Anton Abreu. It is the special merit 

 of the classical Portuguese historian, Barros, the cotemporary 

 of Magellan and Camoens, to have so truly recognized the phys- 

 ical and ethnological character of this archipelago, as to be 

 the first to propose that the Australian Polynesia should be 

 distinguished as a fifth portion of the earth. It was not un- 

 til the Dutch power acquired the ascendency in the Moluccas 



* Gaetano discovered one of the Sandwich Islands in 1542. Re- 

 specting the voyage of Don Jorge de Menezes (1526), and that of Al» 

 varo de Saavedra (1528), to the Ilhas de Papuas, see Barros, Da Asia, 

 Dec. iv., liv. i., cap. 16; and Navarrete, t. v., p. 125. The '^ Hydrog-^ 

 rapky'^ of Joh. Rotz (1542), which is pi*eserved in the British Mu- 

 seum, and has been examined by the learned Dalrymple, contains out- 

 lines of New^ Holland, as does also the collection of maps of Jean Valard 

 of Dieppe (1552), for the first knowledge of which we are indebted to 

 M. Coquebert Monbret. 



t After the death of Mendana, his wife, Dona Isabela Bauetos, a 

 woman distinguished for personal courage and great mental endow- 

 ments, undertook in the Pacific the command of the expedition, which 

 did not terminate until 1596 {Essai Polit. sur la Nouv. Esp., t. iv., p. 



Quiros practiced in his ships the distillation of fresh from salt water 

 on a considerable scale, and his example was followed in several in- 

 stances (Navarrete, t. i., p. liii.). The entire operation, as I have else- 

 where shown on the testimony of Alexander of Aphrodisias, was 

 known as early as the third century of our era, although it was not 

 then practiced in ships. 



