Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia. Richard Henry Major
to these islands. He parted with them by a secret treaty, which was signed at Saragossa the 22nd of April, 1529, for the sum, it is said, of 350,000 golden ducats, against the expressed wish of his subjects, who often, but in vain, besought him to retract it. By his refusal, it was thought that he had received much more. Thenceforth the Spaniards were not permitted to traffic with the Moluccas.
This termination of the quarrel on the part of Portugal was a justification of the claims of the Spaniards, and an acknowledgment in some sort that the Moluccas were in their hemisphere. After such an arrangement, the Portuguese could not show any discoveries made to the eastward, or even under the meridian of these islands. The greatest part of New Holland is more to the east than the Moluccas; hence it is to be believed that for this reason the Portuguese have kept silence respecting their discovery of it.
This discovery, as we have said, must be comprised between the years 1512 and 1542. There is, however, no mention made of it in the voyages of the time, which would sufficiently prove that the Portuguese had suppressed, or at least concealed, the account of it. But I propose to endeavour to supply this defect from the narrative of two of their historians.
Castanheda, a Portuguese author, who had been in India, tells us that in the beginning of July, 1525, the Portuguese of Ternate, one of the Moluccas, dispatched a vessel to the island of Celebes to traffic there; that this vessel on its return was driven by violent winds and currents into an open sea, between the Straits of Magellan and the Moluccas; that the Portuguese found themselves thrown more than three hundred leagues out of their route, and were several times nearly lost. One night their rudder was carried away, and they beat about till the morning, when they discovered an island thirty leagues in circumference, on which they landed, with thanks to God for affording them this asylum. The islanders gave them an excellent reception; they were of a tawny colour, but well made and good looking, both men and women. The men had long black beards. The Portuguese remained four months in this island, not only for the purpose of refitting, but because the winds were contrary for the return to the Moluccas. At length they departed, and reached Ternate on the 20th of January, 1526.
Such is the narrative of Castanheda. The Jesuit Maffei, who has given us a history of India, has supplied us with less details, but his account is not less valuable, inasmuch as he gives us the name of the captain who commanded the ship. He says: Some Portuguese of the Moluccas, having gone to the islands of Celebes to seek for gold, but not having been able to land, were driven by a fearful tempest upon an island, which is distant therefrom three hundred leagues, when they went ashore. The inhabitants, who were simple people, received them very well, and soon became familiar with them. They comprehended their signs, and even understood a little of the language spoken at the Moluccas. All the inhabitants were well-looking, both male and female; they were cheerful, and the men wore beards and long hair. The existence of this island was previously unknown, but in consideration of the account given of it by the captain, whose name was Gomez de Sequeira, and of the map which he drew of this island, his name was given to it.
From the details supplied to us by these two authors, it is evident that the island on which Gomez de Sequeira was thrown was to the eastward of the Moluccas, because, in returning, the Portuguese had to sail westward. Now three hundred Portuguese leagues, starting from the Moluccas or the island of Celebes, lead us to within a trifle of Endeavour Straits; we may therefore conclude that it was upon one of the rocks in this strait that Gomez de Sequeira lost his rudder, and that the island on which he landed was one of the westernmost of those which lie along its western extremity. The Portuguese did not advance far into this strait, for it is plain that they met with no obstacle in returning to the Moluccas. I think, therefore, that the island on which Gomez de Sequeira landed was one of those which were called Prince of Wales’s Islands by Captain Cook, and which are inhabited, because this navigator states that he saw smoke there. What confirms me in this opinion, is the agreement of our two authors in stating that the men of Gomez de Sequeira’s Island had long and black hair and beards. We still find this characteristic distinguishing the natives of New Holland from those of New Guinea, whose hair and beards are crisped. This island, therefore, was nearer to New Holland than to New Guinea, which is, in fact, the case with the Prince of Wales’s Islands.
The Portuguese having discovered in 1525 an island so near as this to New Holland, we must believe that the discovery of that continent followed very soon after that of this island. It was at that time that the controversies between the courts of Portugal and Spain were at their highest; the Portuguese, therefore, needed to be cautious respecting their new discoveries; they were obliged to conceal them carefully. It will not, therefore, be surprising that no mention was made in their works of the discovery of New Holland.
But, after having shown how much importance the Portuguese must have attached to the concealment of their discoveries, and having examined at what period the discovery of New Holland may have been made, it will be not less interesting to inquire how this discovery may have become known in France, and afterwards in England, so early as 1542. There was nothing at that time to induce the court of Portugal to disclose their discoveries to the court of France; there was nothing to bind these two courts in intimate union; on the contrary, their intercourse had for some time been rather cool. As a proof of this, the king of Portugal had in 1543 married his daughter Mary to Philip the Infant of Spain, without giving notice thereof to Francis I, who thereupon showed his vexation in his conduct towards Francis de Norough, the ambassador of Portugal, who, to avoid a rupture between the two courts, answered with considerable reserve. We cannot, therefore, presume that the court of Portugal would ever have frankly communicated its discoveries to the court of France.
For my part, if it is permitted me to offer a conjecture, I think that this information may have resulted from the faithlessness of Don Miguel de Sylva, bishop of Viseo, and secretary of La Purité, a favourite of the king of Portugal, who, according to De la Clede, left the kingdom about 1542, carrying with him some papers of importance with which the king had intrusted him.[5] This historian adds, that Don John was so indignant at the treachery of his favourite, that he outlawed him by a public decree, deprived him of all his benefices, and degraded him from his nobility. He decreed the same penalties against all his followers, and forbad all his subjects to hold any intercourse whatever with him, under pain of his displeasure. The count of Portalegre, the brother of the fugitive, was even confined as prisoner in the tower of Belem for having written to him, and kept under strict guard, until the Infanta Maria, on the point of her departure to marry Philip II, the son of the emperor Charles V, begged his liberation. The king granted the request, on condition that the count should go to Arzilla to fight against the Moors, and earn by his services the forgiveness of his fault.
The severity which the king Don John exhibited on this occasion, sufficiently shows the value which he attached to the papers which had been taken away. It is evident that they were of the greatest importance. They were secret papers; and may they not have been those which gave information of the discoveries of the Portuguese? Our atlases, therefore, may have been copied from these stolen documents; and it only remains for us to discover what has become of the originals.
Now, although the theories to which these maps have given rise have been so complacently accepted by successive geographical writers, the subject has never yet been minutely investigated by any English writer, nor, indeed, have the foregoing arguments of the French been ever before brought together into a focus. The editor, therefore, first proposes to answer the hypothesis of M. Barbié du Bocage respecting the voyage he adduces of Gomez de Sequeira, and then, finally, to deal with the general question of the suggestive evidence of the maps.
With respect to Gomez de Sequeira’s voyage, it is certainly surprising that M. Barbié du Bocage should have contented himself with referring to Castanheda and Maffei for a slight and loose description of this voyage, when it was equally competent to him to have resorted to the more ample description of Barros, the most distinguished of all the early Portuguese historians, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, and who has devoted a whole chapter to the minute description of the voyage in question. (See Dec. 3, liv. x, cap. 5.) So full and ample is Barros’ narrative that, with a modern map before us, we can track Sequeira’s course with a nicety which, so far as the main question is concerned, is not interrupted even by the accidents of the storm and the unshipping of his rudder. Let the reader for a moment consult any