Early Voyages to Terra Australis
A Collection of Documents and Early Maps of the History of Discovery of its Coasts from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook
9781465625748
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
When, at a period comparatively recent in the world’s history, the discovery was made that, on the face of the as yet unmeasured ocean, there existed a western continent which rivalled in extent the world already known, it became a subject of natural enquiry whether a fact of such momentous importance could for so many thousands of years have remained a secret. Nor was the enquiry entirely without response. Amid the obscurity of the past some faint foreshadowings of the great reality appeared to be traceable. The poet with his prophecy, the sage with his mythic lore, and the unlettered seaman who, with curious eye, had peered into the mysteries of the far-stretching Atlantic, had each, as it now appeared, enunciated a problem which at length had met with its solution. In these later days, when the enquiry has assumed gigantic proportions, and the facilities of investigation have been simultaneously increased, much has been done towards bringing to light the evidence of various ascertained or possible visitations from the Old World to the New, which had previously remained unknown. A summary of them has already been laid before the members of the Hakluyt Society by the editor of the present volume, in his introduction to the “Select Letters of Columbus”, and requires no repetition here. Of the future results of that momentous discovery, what human intelligence can foresee the climax? Already the northern half of that vast portion of the globe is mainly occupied by a section of the Anglo-Saxon family, earnest and active in the development of its native energies; and among these, again, are many who look back with eager curiosity to every yet minuter particular respecting the early history of their adopted country. A new field of colonization, second only to that of America, and constituting, as far as is at present known, the largest island in our globe, has in far more recent times been opened up by a slow and gradual progress to a branch of the same expansive family. A future but little inferior in importance may, without much imaginative speculation, be assigned to them, and from them likewise may be reasonably expected the most curious inquiry as to the earliest discoveries by their predecessors of a land so vast in its dimensions, so important in its characteristics, and yet so little known or reasoned upon by the numerous generations of mankind that had passed away before them. In endeavouring to meet this demand it must be premised, that while the main object proposed in this volume is to treat of the early indications of the island now recognized as Australia, anterior to the time of Captain Cook, it is impossible to deal with the real or supposed discoveries which may have taken place prior to that date, without referring at the same time to the discovery of the adjacent island of New Guinea and of the great southern continent, of both of which what we now call Australia was in those times regarded as forming a part. The investigation is one of the most interesting character in all its stages, but beset with doubts and difficulties arising from a variety of causes. The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity; that in the sixteenth century (the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries) there areindications on maps of the great probability of Australia having been already discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documentsimmediately describing these voyages have not been found.
