\ANC1ENT GEOGRAPHY. 653 



Patavino is here, however, quite positive from his standpoint, and in no 

 manner sparing of theoretical information on this unknown Southern Continent. 

 Just where he obtained his information about this circumpolar, continent south of 

 the Spice Islands and Java, we cannot now so clearly tell ; but it proves that al- 

 ready, in 1597, Autralia was definitely known. Yet ninety years afterward, when 

 Dampier explored the west and north coasts of New Holland, and also New 

 Guinea, Australia was known only to him as Eendracht's, or Houtman's (Dutch 

 navigators who were popularly supposed to have been the first to ever sight its 

 shores) Land. 



The Spanish explorer and navigator, Quiros, who had traversed, in about 

 the years 1605 and 1606, the whole South Pacific from South America to New 

 Guinea, proclaimed his discovery of lands in the South Pacific, christening them 

 "Terra Australis." In after times his discoveries for a long period puzzled other 

 navigators, who in vain ransacked the South Pacific Ocean for his continent, lost 

 to all others, and which Capt. James Cook proved did not exist except as an ice- 

 clad Antarctic land, formed, perhaps, only of islands that are connected by the 

 enormous ice-fields of perpetual frost — fit habitation for the penguin and the ever- 

 restless albatross. 



From the Terra Australis, if we follow Patavino's map into the China seas, 

 we will find here but few of our modern familiar names. But even when we find 

 the Moluccas, Philippine Islands, Mindanao, Matelotes, and Japan, how unlike in 

 shape and erroneous in position ! Looking at the Chinese coast, we see a general 

 resemblance to modern maps, but we find no Corea, no Saghalin Island, no 

 Kamtschatka, even after we pass the last two points where we would expect to see 

 them. Instead of this, we have a coast bearing off to the north from the parallel 

 of 40 north latitude until we reach the 59th parallel of north latitude. Here we 

 find delineated Cape Tabin, the most northeasterly point of Asia washed by the 

 Arctic Sea, which is shown as stretching eastward more than 25 ° of longitude to 

 the American coast, which seems to bear in direction east-northeast, very much 

 as it is known to-day, between Behring's Strait and Icy Cape. 



But here we find the queerest bit of information possible. Our modern geog- 

 rapher gives us, as his authority for the location of Cape Tabin, Pliny himself ! 

 For, in Book VI, Pliny says : 



"Beyond the Caspian Sea and the Scythian Ocean, the land projects far to the 

 east, * * * the face of its shores being turned toward the rising sun. Next to this 

 the land is uninhabited, from the amount of snow. The next region is wholly un- 

 cultivated, from the ferocity of its inhabitants and the multitude of wild animals. 

 Beyond these deserts are other Scythians; then other solitudes, as far as the ridge 

 of mountains overhanging the sea which is called Tabin." 



Pliny does not give his authority for these statements ; but, evidently, he had 

 them from some one who, in the zenith of Roman power in Asia, had penetrated 

 into the Siberian deserts. But this was enough for Patavino. So he gives us a 

 very creditable map of Siberia, with the peninsula of Cape Taimur, which he calls 

 Scythicum Promontorium, extending to about 82 north latitude. In this land of 



