The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea | Page 3

cartography affords, and take cognisance of
various descriptive passages to be found in old authors.
These passages will be given here in connection with the old charts,

and followed up by the narratives of voyages in search of the "Great
South Land."
The numerous maps and illustrations have been carefully selected; they
will greatly help the student towards understanding these first pages of
the history of Australia.
GEORGE COLLINGRIDGE.

THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW GUINEA.
CHAPTER I.
IN QUEST OF THE SPICE ISLANDS.
"And the New South rose with her forehead bare-- Her forehead hare to
meet the smiling sun-- Australia in her golden panoply; And far off
Empires see her work begun, And her large hope has compassed every
sea."
--SIR GILBERT PARKER.
What was the relative position of European nations in the arena of
maritime discovery at the beginning of the sixteenth century?
Portugal was then mistress of the sea.
Spain, too, indulging in an awakening yawn, was clutching with her
outstretched hands at the shadowy treasure-islands of an unfinished
dream.
England had not yet launched her navy; Holland had not built hers.
Portugal had already buried a king--the great grandson of Edward III.
of England--whose enterprise had won for him the name of Henry the
Navigator.

Slowly and sadly--slowly always, sadly often--his vessels had crept
down the west coast of Africa; little by little one captain had
overstepped the distance traversed by his predecessor, until at last in
1497 a successful voyager actually rounded the Cape.
Then Portugal, clear of the long wall that had fenced her in on one side
for so many thousands of miles, trod the vast expanse of waters to the
east, and soon began to plant her flag in various ports of the Indian
Ocean. [See Portuguese flags on Desliens' Map.]
Pushing on further east in search of the Spice Islands, she found
Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, Java, Timor, Ceram, the Aru Islands and
Gilolo; she had reached the famous and much coveted Moluccas, or
Spice Islands, and set to work building forts and establishing trading
stations in the same way as England is doing nowadays in South Africa
and elsewhere.*
[* In a chart of the East Indian Archipelago, drawn probably during the
first Portuguese voyages to the Spice Islands (1511-1513), the island of
Gilolo is called Papoia. Many of the islands situated on the west and
north-west coast of New Guinea became known to the Portuguese at an
early date, and were named collectively OS PAPUAS. The name was
subsequently given to the western parts of New Guinea. Menezes, a
Portuguese navigator, is said to have been driven by a storm to some of
these islands, where he remained awaiting the monsoonal change.]
Meanwhile the Spaniards, after the discovery of America by Columbus,
were pursuing their navigations and explorations westward with the
same object in view, and it soon dawned upon them that a vast ocean
separated them from the islands discovered by the Portuguese.
Magellan was then sent out in search of a westerly passage; he reached
the regions where the Portuguese had established themselves, and
disputes arose as to the limits of the Portuguese and Spanish
boundaries.
Pope Alexander VI. had generously bestowed one-half of the
undiscovered world upon the Spanish, and the other half upon the

Portuguese, charging each nation with the conversion of the heathen
within its prospective domains.
Merely as a fact this is interesting enough, but viewed in the light of
subsequent events it assumes a specific importance.
The actual size of the earth was not known at the time, and this division
of Pope Alexander's, measured from the other side of the world,
resulted in an overlapping and duplicate charting of the Portuguese and
Spanish boundaries in the longitudes of the Spice Islands,* an
overlapping due, no doubt, principally to the desire of each contending
party to include the Spice Islands within its own hemisphere, but also
to the fact that the point of departure which had been fixed in the
vicinity of the Azores, was subsequently removed westward as far as
the mouth of the Amazons.
If Portugal and Spain had remained to the present day in possession of
their respective hemispheres, the first arrangement would have given
Australia and New Guinea to Portugal; whereas the second
arrangement would have limited her possessions at the longitude that
separates Western Australia from her sister States to the east, which
States would have fallen to the lot of Spain. Strange to say, this line of
demarcation still separates Western Australia from South Australia so
that those two States derive their boundary demarcation from Pope
Alexander's line.
A few years after the discovery of the New World the Spanish
Government found it necessary, in order to regulate her navigations,
and ascertain what new discoveries were