30 yew Guinea. 



beeu found within a comparatively recent period, on tlie banks 

 of a river on the South-east coast, I shall defer any further 

 reference to it for the present. It is principally, however, to the 

 south and south-east coasts of the island that I would direct the 

 attention of the Society during our present meeting. 



The first European navigator whoever saw the south-east coast 

 of !N^ew Gruinea was Luis Yaez de Torres, when running across 

 the Pacific from Mexico or New Spain, to the Molucca Islands, 

 in the year 1606, in the Spanish frigate, Aliniranta. What De 

 Torres took, however, for " the beginning of New G-uinea," as 

 he called it, was mei'el}^ the eastern extremity of the Louisiade 

 Archipelago, an extensive group of Islands to the South-east of 

 New Guinea. But De Torres subsequently discovered and 

 passed through the Strait that now bears his name, and that 

 separates the mainland of Australia from New Guinea, at Cape 

 York. 



The land wliich De Torres mistook for the east end of New 

 Guinea Avas afterwards designated by an eminent Prench navi- 

 gator, M. Bougainville, in the year 1768, the Louisiade Archi- 

 pelago, in honour of the then King of France, Louis XV., the 

 lien aimt, or well beloved. The existence of the Strait, however, 

 was at that time unknown to European navigators, the Dispatch 

 and Eeport of Torres to the King of iSpain being found unti'aus- 

 mitted in the Eoyal archives at Manilla, when the Philippine 

 Islands were taken and occupied for a time by the English, about 

 a century ago. 



Captain Edwards, of H. M. S. Pandora, which was wrecked in 

 Torres Straits, when returning to England from Tahiti with the 

 mutineers of the Boiiiiti/ in the year 1791, coasted along a por- 

 tion of the south-east coast of New Guinea, and named two of 

 its remarkable points Cape Hood and Cape Hodney, in honour 

 of two well-known English admirals. M. D'Urville, another 

 eminent Erench navigator, coasted along the south-east portion 

 of the coast of New Guinea, in the French discovery ships 

 JJ Astrolabe and La Zelee, in the year 1840. 



Captain Blackwood, R. N., of Her Majesty's Surveying shij) 

 Fit/, Avhile pursuing his important labours along the north-east 

 coast of Australia, and the islands in Torres Straits, in the years 

 1812, 1816, (of which a very interesting account is given by Mr. 

 Jukes, Naturalist to the expedition) examined, more or less closely, 

 about 140 miles of the south-east coast of New Guinea, com- 

 mencing nearly due north from Cape York, the north-eastern 

 extremity of the Austral land. There is a great bight on this 

 part of the south-east coast of New Guinea, like the Gulf of Car- 

 pentaria, on the north, and the great Australian Bight on the 

 south coast of this great South Land, and also like the Bight 



