10 THE ANTARCTIC. 



the great " Terra Australis incognita or " nondum 

 coonita ". 



In the year 1500 an accidental and totally unexpected 

 extension of the knowledge of geography took place. On 

 a voyage to the East Indies the Portuguese admiral, 

 Pedralvarez Cabral, took a westerly course, in order to 

 avoid the calms in the equatorial zones in rounding the 

 Cape of Good Hope. Thus the coast of Brazil was 

 discovered. He took it to be an island, gave it the 

 name of Ilha da Vera Cruz, and sent back one of his 

 vessels to Lisbon with the news of his discovery. A 

 flotilla was immediately equipped, and it set out in the 

 following year to explore the coasts of the newly-found 

 iand. Under whose command this expedition was placed 

 is unknown, but Amerigo Vespucci took part in it, prob- 

 ably as pilot. The letters of this famous Florentine to 

 Pier Francesco di Medici are the only source extant for 

 any information about this voyage. The survey of the 

 coast line of Brazil itself, for which the name Terra 

 Americi or America was proposed by the German geo- 

 grapher, Hylacomylus, in 1507, is of no interest here. 

 Our interest centres in the land subsequently sighted, 

 since this was possibly the very first discovery made in the 

 regions defined above as Antarctic. Vespucci relates, 

 not without ample reference to his own deserts, how the 

 coast of Brazil was explored and named, from Cape 

 St. Roque to the Bay of Cananea. There, for some 

 unexplained reason, the further exploration of the coast 

 was abandoned on the frontiers of the modern states of 

 St. Paulo and Parana, and the expedition sailed into the 

 open sea on the 13th (or — the accounts vary — the 15th) 

 of February in a south-easterly direction. On the 3rd 

 of April Vespucci reckoned that they had made 500 

 nautical miles (leghe in the old Italian accounts), equiva- 

 lent in round numbers to 1800 modern nautical miles. 

 Four days later, on the 7th of April, new land, inacces- 



