HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 23 



greatly assisted by favourable ice years. The land dis- 

 covered by Gerritz was long inscribed as such on the 

 maps, and was also transferred to the great southern 

 continent until after Cook's voyages, when it as errone- 

 ously dropped from the maps altogether. 



The subsequent use to which the Dutch account was 

 put is seen in a later rendering of Gerritz' report. There 

 the absurd statement is added that the land sighted 

 seemed to stretch away to the Solomon Isles, which had 

 been discovered to the south-east of New Guinea by 

 Mendana in 1567, and were then lost to the world till 

 1768. It is impossible to decide when this interpolation 

 first found its way into the account of Gerritz. It 

 seems almost as if Mercator's map of the world of the 

 year 1569 were responsible for it. The repeatedly 

 mentioned coast of his southern land is here drawn as 

 running from the western outlet of the Straits of Magellan 

 to about latitude 66° S.and longitude 92 W. (he reckons 

 from the meridian of the island of Corvo), and from here to 

 latitude 19° S. and longitude 170° W. in almost a straight 

 line, to a hypothetical region corresponding to Torres 

 Straits between New Guinea and Australia (of course 

 before the discovery of the straits by Torres). It is 

 remarkable that Mercator, while indicating by a dotted 

 line that the outline is hypothetical, gives a continuous 

 line between 45° and 35 S., apparently fixing a coast 

 that had been sighted. This might lead one to think 

 of the first discovery of New Zealand, which perhaps 

 fell to the lot of the Spaniard, Juan Fernandez (after 

 1563), who certainly discovered the island now bearing 

 his name, the original of Robinson Crusoe's island. The 

 news of a large inhabited country in southern waters would 

 naturally tend to confirm the fixed tradition of a southern 

 continent. 



Two Dutchmen, Schouten and Le Maire, achieved 

 what Drake, though he had rounded the cape subse- 



