Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia. Richard Henry Major
civilization. This account is quite incompatible with the character for treachery and barbarous cruelty, which we have received of the natives of North Australia from all the more recent voyagers.
Let the whole account, says Burney, be reconsidered without prepossession, and the idea that will immediately and most naturally occur is, that the Southern India discovered by Gonneville was Madagascar. De Gonneville having doubled (passed round) the Cape, was by tempests driven into calm latitudes, and so near to this land, that he was directed thither by the flight of birds. The refusal of the crew to proceed to the Eastern India, would scarcely have happened if they had been so far advanced to the east as New Holland.
A more reasonable claim than the preceding to the discovery of Australia in the early part of the sixteenth century, may be advanced by the Portuguese from the evidence of various MS. maps still extant, although the attempt made recently to attach the credit of this discovery to Magalhaens in the famous voyage of the Victoria round the world in 1520, is, as we shall endeavour to show, perfectly untenable. The claim of this honour for Spain is thus asserted in the “Compendio Geografico Estadistico de Portugal y sus posesiones ultramarinas,” by Aldama Ayala, 8vo, Madrid, 1855, p. 482. “The Dutch lay claim to the discovery of the continent of Australia in the seventeenth century, although it was discovered by Fernando Magalhaens, a Portuguese, by order of the Emperor Charles V, in the year 1520, as is proved by authentic documents, such as the atlas of Fernando Vaz Dourado, made in Goa in 1570, on one of the maps in which is laid down the coast of Australia. The said magnificent atlas, illuminated to perfection, was formerly preserved in the Carthusian Library at Evora.”
A similar claim was also made for their distinguished countryman, though the voyage was made in the service of Spain, in an almanack published at Angra, in the island of Terceira, by the government press, anno 1832, and composed, it is supposed, by the Viscount Sa’ de Bandeira, the present minister of marine at Lisbon. In the examination of this subject, the editor has had the advantage of the assistance of a friend in Lisbon, who, in his researches among the remaining literary wealth of that city, has exhibited an earnestness and an amount of care and thought but too rarely witnessed in delegated investigations. The reader will not wonder that the zeal of a true lover of literature has been thrown into these researches, when he learns that they have been made by Dr. John Martin, the well-known author (for it would be wrong to call him the editor) in days now long gone by, of that most interesting and important work, “Mariner’s Tonga Islands.” As will be presently seen, the whole question of the possibility of the discovery of Australia having been made by the Portuguese, in the first half of the sixteenth century, is sufficiently enigmatical to call for a great extent of inquiry, and the editor’s venerable and honoured friend, though now grown old in the service of science and literature, has entered into the subject with a cordiality and ardour, commensurate with the puzzling nature of the subject.
But first with respect to the claim on behalf of Magalhaéns, as based upon the map of Vaz Dourado. The following are extracts from Dr. Martin’s reports upon the map.
“On inspecting the map and examining the more southern regions, I found that the island of Timor was the most southern land laid down in lat. 10° S., which is its true situation; while further to the south all was blank, excepting certain ornamental devices as far as about latitude 17° or 18°, which was the lowest margin of the map. To the west and east the map was bordered by a scale of latitude, in single degrees; but this map did not occupy the whole sheet of vellum, for to the right of the eastern scale of latitude something else was laid down, viz., a line of coast running with a little southing from west to east, with many rivers and names of places upon it, and this notice underneath, ‘Esta Costa Descubrió Fernaō de Magalhāes naturall portuges pormandado do emperador Carllos o anno 1520.’
“If the whole sheet is meant to constitute one map and referable to the same scale of latitude, then the coast in question is not where New Holland ought to be, being north of Timor and much too far to the eastward. On turning over to the next sheet (in the atlas) there is a similar line of coast laid down with precisely the same notice (above quoted) at the bottom, and evidently a continuation of the same coast and upon the same scale. I send a list of the names, which I have made out as well as I could, for they are very small and several letters are not very clear.
“The reasons why I cannot consider this coast as part of New Holland, are, 1st. It is at least one thousand five hundred miles in length, and nearly straight as a whole, though indented in its parts; 2ndly. That it is represented to have numerous rivers, which are very rare in New Holland (on the coast); 3rdly. That it is considerably distant from its true place to the south of Timor, which in the atlas is laid down correctly as to latitude, although, 4thly. There is plenty of room for it on the map. I have thought it might be part of the coast of South America, where Magelhaens was long detained, and that it is put down as a sort of memorandum of the great extent of coast which he discovered in the first circumnavigation of the globe. With indomitable perseverance he pushed his way through the straits that bear his name into the Pacific, and in this vast ocean he sailed about for three months and twenty days (says Pigafetta, who accompanied him and wrote an account of the voyage) without discovering anything excepting two small desert islands, until he arrived at the Phillippines. Had he really discovered so much of the coast of a great southern continent, Spain, in whose service he was, might well have boasted of the feat, and Portugal, whose native he was, might have defended the claims of the man who performed it, and not let so bold and noble a discovery (for those times) remain so long in doubt.
“Now with respect to America: if we examine carefully the list of names upon this line of coast, we shall find some that have a resemblance to those on the coast of America, along which Magelhaens pursued his course. One of these, C. de las Virgines, is found in some maps just at the entrance of the Straits of Magellan, on the eastern side. I do not see any name like Fromose,[4] but there is the name Gaia Fromosa, in or near the Straits of Magellan (in the same atlas). In the enclosed list of names we have also Terra de Gigätes or Terra de Gigantes, and may not this be the Patagonians?
“On a closer and more minute examination of Dourado’s map, and others, I think it may now be made evident that the coast said to have been discovered by Magalhaéns, in 1520, and mistaken by Sa de Bandeira and others, for part of the coast of New Holland, is no other than the northern coast of New Guinea.
“Now New Guinea, or part of it, as laid down by Dourado, appears under the name of Os Papuos, and extends to the eastward as far as the scale of latitude is marked, but beyond that scale there is about half an inch of space, and there the coast in question commences, and runs a long way towards the east, with a little southing, and has many islands bordering upon it; whether this be either a continuation or a repetition more extended of Papua, it is much in the same latitude, and runs in the same direction. Again, on referring to an old map of Mercator, I found some names upon New Guinea, similar to those on the coast in question; there I found C. de las Virgines; I. de los Cresbos; R. de Bolcados; Buen Puerto, answering to C. de las Virgines; I. de los Crespos: Bullcones Puerto Bueno, as found among the names on the coast in question; but what places the matter still more beyond a doubt is, that the names in both run in the same consecutive order from west to east, upon several of the islands which border the main land.
| Names of Islands as laid down in Dourado’s map along the coast said to be New Holland, in consecutive order from W. to E. | Names of Islands as laid down in Mercator’s map on the coast of New Guinea, in consecutive order from W. to E. |
|---|---|
| I. de los Martiles | Y. de los Martyres |
| I. dellos Crespos | Y. de Crespos |
| I. Duarati | Y. Dearti |
| I. de Armo | No such name |
| I. de Malagrate | Y. de Malagente |
| I. Dombres brancos | Y. de Hombres brancos |
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