48 A PRELIMINAKY CRITIQUE OF THE TERRA AITSTRALIS LEGEND. 



Cape St. Augustine to 40 deg. S., without observing the mouth 

 of that river. The coast-line of Desliens is prolonged about 

 10 deg. south of the actual termination of the American 

 continent. This excessive southing is characteristic of maps 

 of that period and of that continent. Thus Schoner in his 

 globe (1520) places Bahia 10 deg. or more to the south of its 

 true position. 



The intercourse of Norman merchants with Brazilian ports 

 very early in the sixteenth century, gives us to understand 

 how the outlines of that part of the American coast should 

 have become known in Normandy ; and the fact of the 

 extreme ignorance of longitude, and how to ascertain it that 

 prevailed at the period we are speaking of, combined with 

 the confusion already existing in the minds of cartographers 

 between Brazil and the Terra Australis, all this explains to us, 

 in a great measure, how the South American coast-lines came 

 to be transferred to so distant a part of the world. It can, 

 however, only be matter for conjecture why Eotz and the 

 others made an eastern coast into a western one. We only 

 know that it was the western part of the Terra Australis that 

 the Portuguese were supposed to have discovered, whilst it 

 was, in all probability, the eastern coast of South America 

 that was first and best known to the French. 



The advent of French ships in Brazil about the time of 

 Cabral's visit, or earlier, is well attested. Eamusio presei'ves 

 a memoir written in 1539, in which we are told that "a 

 portion of Brazil was first discovered by the Portuguese ; and 

 thirty-five years ago Denys de Honfleur discovered the other 

 part." iii. 357, F. The results of an inquiry into the date of 

 the first French traffic with Brazil were published in 1845, 

 in the Bevista trimensal do Instituto do Brazil, vi. pp. 412-413. 

 "In the year 1504," says this journal, "the French arrived in 

 Brazil for the first time at the Port of Bahia ; they entered 

 the River Paragua9u, in that Bay, did their traffic there and, 

 when they had done a good trade, returned to France, whence 

 three other ships came afterwards. Whilst these ships were 

 trading at the same place as the former ones, four ships of 

 the Portuguese fleet entered the riv^er and burnt two French 

 ships; and took the third, after killing a number of their 

 people. Some of them, however, escaped in a boat and 

 found at Point Itapuama, four leagues from Bahia, a French 

 vessel about to return home." The Revista is at fault in 

 assigning to the year 1504 the earliest appearance of the 

 French in Brazil. I do not require at this stage to ask where 

 was the much disputed landfall of De Gronneville, but only 

 to quote some remarks of his regarding the country at which. 

 he touched to freight his vessel on his way home from the 

 "Indes Meridionales " of his six months' sojourn. "Then 

 having passed the tropic of Capricorn and taken our position. 



