6 AUSTRALASIA. 



always within sight of land, they nevertheless advanced far towards the east. But 

 before the first century of the vulgar era, tradition makes no reference to the 

 great discovery of the regularly alternating movement of the trade winds and 

 monsoons, by means of which mariners were iirst enabled boldly to venture on the 

 high seas, running fearlessly before the wind from the African and Arabian 

 seaboard to that of the Indian peninsula. There can, however, be little doubt that 

 these alternating aerial currents were already well known to the Arab and 

 Phoenician navigators and utilised by them in their distant expeditions to the far 

 east. But the merit of the discovery was attributed to Hippalos, the Greco- 

 Egyptian pilot, whose name was even given to the two regular easterly and 

 westerly winds. 



During the Roman epoch the islands and the Asiatic peninsulas of the Indian 

 Ocean were better known than twelve centuries later, that is, on the eve of Vasco 

 de Gama's expedition. The Western traders were well acquainted with Taprobana 

 (Ceylon), and the Golden Chersonese (Malay peninsula), as well as the island of 

 " Barley," the present Java. Their commercial relations reached as far as the 

 Moluccas, for the clove had already made its appearance on the tables of wealthy 

 Romans. During the night watch mariners beguiled the hours with narratives of 

 marvellous adventures, in which the flights of fancy became intermingled with 

 more or less truthful descriptions of peoples, animals, and plants actually seen by 

 the relaters on their travels. From the seafarers of diverse nations, who iraded 

 in the service of Rome, these tales passed in a more or less modified form to the 

 Arab mariners of mediœval times, and from this source, with its germ of truth^ 

 were developed many of the marvellous stories embodied in the TJioiimnd and One 

 Nights. 



The modern era of exploration for the oceanic regions coincides with that of 

 the New World. In 1498, Yasco de Gama, after rounding the Cape of Good 

 Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean straight to Calicut on the Malabar coast. Two 

 years afterwards Diego Dias, brother of the other Dias who had first doubled the 

 same cape, discovered S. Lourenço (Madagascar), while others, pushing stiU 

 eastwards, reached the shores of Further India. In 1509 Malacca had already 

 become a centre of Portuguese dominion, and henceforth all the Asiatic vessels 

 calling at that emporium were obliged to accept the services of a Portuguese 

 pilot. 



The Eastern Archipelago, which had already been visited by the Italian, 

 Bartema, was soon embraced by the commercial empire of Lisbon ; but once 

 masters of the valuable Spice Islands, the Portuguese mariners seldom ventured 

 into the unknown waters farther east. To another nation, represented, however, 

 by the Portuguese, Magellan, fell the glory of first completing the circumnaviga- 

 tion of the globe, across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Following the 

 western route round South America, instead of the eastern taken by Vasco de 

 Gama, Magellan traversed in 1520 the strait that bears his name, and first of 

 Europeans penetrated into the South Pacific, sailing in search of the easternmost 

 Portuguese factories. By a strange accident his ships traversed an open space of 



