FOR THE SOUTH LAND 
35 
of this report that Dirk Gerritsz was the discoverer of 
the South Shetlands and his name has recently been at- 
tached by the leading German cartographers to the whole 
archipelago lying south of 6i° in the longitude of Tierra 
del Fuego. From the record of the other vessels of the 
squadron, we learn that the leader, Olivier van Noort, 
had received a letter from Dirk Gerritsz, stating that he 
had missed the appointed meeting place at Santa Maria 
Island, ran short of provisions, reached Valparaiso in 
great distress and was wounded and taken prisoner by 
the Spaniards. Not a word was said as to any discovery 
of land in the far south. This was first heard of in some 
supplementary notes incorporated in the introduction to 
Herrera’s “ History of the Doings of the Spaniards in 
America,” by Kasper Barlaeus, who translated that 
Spanish work into Latin in 1622. 
It seems likely that Gerritsz’s name was associated by 
mistake with the report of quite another voyage, and the 
origin of the mistake, as pointed out by Mr. E. S. Balch, 
is probably a manuscript dating from the end of the sev- 
enteenth century, which is preserved in the Royal 
Archives at The Hague. It commences : 
“ Laurens Claess of Antwerp, aged about 40 years, has 
served as boatswain on the Magellan ship Blijde Boot- 
schap which sailed with other ships ... in 1598 
. . . has served under the Admiral Don Gabriel de 
Castiglio with three ships along the coast of Chile towards 
Valparaiso and from there towards the Strait, and that in 
the year 1603, and he went in March to 64 degrees where 
they had much snow.” 
No mention is made of land, and it would seem that 
Dirk Gerritsz’s old shipmate had really approached within 
a few degrees of the Antarctic circle on board a Spanish 
