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doubled Cape Horn, and crossed the Pacific in a higher 

 latitude than Magellan and Drake. Being so far to the south 

 as 17° S. lat. they confidently expected to tall in with the great 

 Southland, but were constantly disappointed, finding nothing 

 but a few islands. Le Maire's ships, on reaching Batavia after 

 their long voyage, were seized and confiscated by his country- 

 man, Governor-General Coen,for having come into the Indies 

 in violation of the charter of monopoly of the Dutch East 

 India Company. This damped the ardour of explorers for 

 many years, so much so that for nearly a century no Dutch 

 navigator ventured again to attempt the circumnavigation of 

 the globe. 



These various expeditions had somewhat circumscribed the 

 possible area within which the Southland might be found. 

 Still the old cartographers found the idea of' a sea full of 

 islands so little in harmony with their prepossessions, that in 

 the early part of the 17th century (even so late as 1640) they 

 boldly drew on their maps of the world a huge "Terra 

 Australia Nondum Cognita." This was depicted as surrounding 

 the South Pole, and occupying a very considerable portion of 

 the Southern Hemisphere. In the South Atlantic the Pro- 

 montorium Terrse Australia jutted northwards towards Africa. 

 On _ the west only the narrow Straits of Magellan and Le 

 Maire broke its continuity with South America and gave the 

 sole means of passage into the South Sea. On the eastern 

 side this continent of the mapmakers blocked all access to the 

 Pacific. It extended in a solid but gradually narrowing mass 

 from the Pole up to the very Equator. In this respect the 

 maps were a jumble compounded of discoveries, actually made 

 but imperfectly known, fitted on to a baseless theory. It is 

 pretty certain that Portuguese ships sailing from the Eastern 

 Archipelago had somewhere between 1512 and 1542 seen the 

 north-west coast, of Australia, and that these discoveries were 

 vaguely indicated on some of the early charts. They appeared 

 on the cartographers' maps as the land of Beach, exceedingly 

 rich in gold. New Guinea had been sighted by the Portuguese 

 Maneses in 1511, and again by the Spaniard Saavedra in 

 1528 : therefore Nova Guinea appeared as the most 

 northerly extension of the continent under the Equator — some- 

 times as an island separated by a narrow strait, sometimes as 

 an integral part of the continent itself. Beyond New Guinea 

 it is probable that the reported discovery by the Portuguese 

 of certain vague and imperfectly known 'lands forming part of 

 the coast of Australia justified the delineation of the north- 

 eastern shores of the continent. But from the point where 

 information failed imagination stepped in, boldly carrying the 

 coast-line from Queensland down in a south-easterly direction 



