EARLY DISCOVERIES IN AUSTRALASIA.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1425, 1 August 1884, Page 2

EARLY DISCOVERIES IN AUSTRALASIA.

♦ Mr Edward A. Petnerfck writes to the Athenaeum of May 26 :— After many years* research on this subject, going once -mou&- oxer the ground traversed by , JPfy grosses, Dalrymple, De la Borde,v.t* | J r ney» Malte-Brun, Flinders, Jfr R. H. Major, and others, I have 'been aMe, by comparing 1 the old accounts of the voyagers with some newly-discovered charts a id our present knowledge of those great southern coasts, to settle one or two long-vexed questions. It was a matter of doubt during th* seventeenth century and up to the time of Cook's voyage and Dalrymple's discovery of Torres' journal, late in the eighteenth century, whether New Guinea was or was not separated by a * • strait from the Great South Land. That uncertainty arose from the misunderstanding by geographers (Mercator and others) of the voyage made in 1545 by a Spanish vessel balled the the San Juan, commanded* -by Ingio Ortez, de Retez, vith one Jaspar Rico, as pilot, who. made an attempt to cross the Pacific ' from the Mbluooas to Mexico* a passage which, had not tl>en been achieved by any vessel.

This was the second attempt of the San Juan, With the first attempt we have nothing to do at present, except to say that it was made under Hernando de la Torre and Juan Gaetan, who are sometimes stated to have made the second attempt also. They attempted a noi-th-easterly pas■ige. Hitherto all writers have ashamed that Ortez de Retez's voyage was made along the north coast of Papua, and the mapmal^ers mark certain alleged discoveries on the coast. wThe accounts of the voyage by Hen-era and others appear to be derived from Gaetan'a journal (an Italian version is in Ramusio, vol. i.\ but Gaetan did not go out in this expedition, and wrote from mere hearsay. On the second occasion the San Juan went to the South from the Moluccas, and sailed through Torres Straits (that is, 61 years before Torres came there) and along the coast of a great country for 600 leagues without "coming to the end of the land." Believing this country had never been seen by Europeans before, they named it New because of the resemblance of its inhabitants to the natives of the •Guinea coast of Africa. Thftj must have known that Papua (our New Guinea) was known and named — what was then discovered of it — by Menezes, Saavedra, and others more than 20 years before. 1 Moreover, the Papuan natives frequented the Moluccas. The Wroic Galvano, writing in the hospital refuge a few years after Gaetan's return to Lisbon, however disinterested Jie may have been and careless of his own interests, was jealous for the memory of Saavedra, and supposes {'" Discoveries of the World," Hakluyt Society," 1872) that Ortez de Re tez had ranged along the coast of ' Os Papuas,' -and, not knowing Saavedra had been tbei'B before him, gave that country a new name. The name of New Guinea was given to Australia, and in proof I would refer readers to the copy of an •old Spanish chart of the " Tierra Austral," on that part of which now known to us as Queensland are the words " Nueva Guinea." This copy was made from a sketch sent from Manila by a Jesuit missionary in the seventeenth centnry, and has been •reproduced by the Spanish Government in the appendix to " Cartas •de Indias," Madrid, 1877. This ■••Tierra Austral" is more sharpely "than any "Australia" preceding the time of Cook. The San Juan was one •of five vessels sent from Mexico in 1542, under command of Ruy Loyez de "Villalobos (with Juan Gaetan as pilot), to .colonise the Philippine Islands. 'On their way, in December of that year, they discovered the Hawaiian Islands. I have also re-examined the French mappemondes, referred to by Mr Major and others as evidence of discoveries made in Australasia by French navigators. They are copies from Portuguese originals, now lost The French made one voyage to Eastern seas •during the 16th century — that conducby the Parmen tiers in 1529, which «ame to a disastrous end off the west of Sumatra, when they had discovered only three or four small islands of that coast, shown in Ramusio's map. The French mapppemondes referred to ail ■describe the Great South Laud (Jave le -Grand) as running up to the equator, ■evidently copied from some sectional Portuguese chart or charts made early in the sixteenth century, when latitude tis well as longitude was very imperfect and when Papua was known only as a cluster of islands. It was my good fortune two or three years ago to meet with a mapperaonde, d'-awn at Dieppe by Nicholas Dnsliens in 1566, •which is on a small scale ; but if it -does aot show so many names as others of earlier date it has a peculiar feature •wanting in those maps. In Deslieus' mappemonde the flags of the different nations are laid on the discoveries made by their respective navigators. While taking credit for the discoveries of his own countrymen in Canada, Acaide, &c, he assigns that of Jave le Grand (that is Australia) to the Portuguese. I may here note that the John Rotz whose "Book of Indrography" (1542) is dedicated to Henry VIII (now in the British Museum), did not come to England in the train of Anne of Cleves, as some conjecture, but was probably the " John Rut" who conducted one of Henry's vessels to Newfoundland in 1527, and who, would therefore, have been in King Henry's service something like 15 years. It has been assumed by some writers that the names of Rotz, Le Testu, and others which appear on these mappelnondes were those of the discoverers. This is a mistake. It was the custom for pilots to make their own charts and to put their own names upon them. Very often they rendered names of places incorrectly, or placed them in wrong positions, and Mercator and others coming after have perpetuated these errors. Thanks to the admirable manner in which the Hakluyt Society's edition of Galvano was edited by the late Viceadmiral Bethune, I have been able to read that the survivors of Magellan's expedition had sight of a large part of the west coast of Australia on their homewaH Voyage in February and March 1522. This carries back authenticated records of the sighting of any part of the Australian coast 84 years, the voyages of the Duyphen, Dutch vessel, and that of Torres, hitherto the Maliest ascertained records, having been made in 1606. 1 am aware that a claim was formerly made on Magellan's behalf to the discovery of the east coast of Australia. That, however, was disproved by" Mr Major in the introduction to his "Early Voyages to the Terra Australia " (Makluyt Society, 1859). The Portuguese were doubtless on both coasts before Magellan's time (1520), perhaps during the first decade of thai century.