VI 
PREFACE. 
Pacific and Indian Oceans ; and in contemplating 
this new extension of her possessions*, I cannot 
avoid recalling to mind a curious and prophetic 
remark of Burton, who, in alluding to the dis- 
coveries of the Spanish navigator Ferdinando 
de Quiros (Anno 1612), says — “ I would know 
whether that hungry Spaniard’s discovery of 
Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be 
as true as that of Mercurius Britannicus, or his 
of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet, in likeli- 
hood, it may be so ; for without all question, it 
being extended from the tropick of Capricorn to 
the circle Antarctick, and lying as it doth in the 
temperate zone, cannot chuse but yeeld in time 
some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, 
as America did unto the Spaniards f — Burton’s 
Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. II. Sect. ii. No. 3. 
* The distance between Melville Island and Hobart Town in 
Van Diemen’s Land, the former being- the most northern, and the 
latter the most southern, establishment under the g-overnment of 
New South Wales, is more than 2700 miles, and comprises an 
extent of coast nearly equal to that of the British possessions in 
India! 
f Since the land that Quiros discovered and called Terra del 
Espiritu Santo was, at the time Burton wrote, considered to be 
the Eastern Coast of New Holland, I am justified in the use I have 
made of the above curious passage. 
