The kangaroo is not represented; no, nor the gum-tree either, perhaps! But that clump of bamboos* on the top of a hill is not a volcano in full eruption, as a learned critic once ventured to assert.
[* Bamboos are plentiful on the north-western coasts of Australia, planted, no doubt, by Malay fishermen in search of trepang, who from time immemorial frequented those shores.]
We see, on these charts, fairly correct presentments of that animal seen for the first time by the Spaniards in the straits to which Magellan gave his name, and described by the Italian narrator, Pigafetta, who accompanied the first circumnavigators.
Pigafetta says:--
"This animal has the head and ears of a mule, the body of a camel, the legs of a stag, and the tail of a horse, and like this animal it neighs."
Guanaco
The animal thus described by Pigafetta is the Guanaco, Camelus huanacus, and it is not astonishing to find it represented on the Australian continent, for we know* that this continent was supposed to be connected with Tierra del Fuego and was sometimes called Magellanica, in consequence. In the chart that I am describing, Australia is called Jave-la-Grande--La Grande Jave would have been the proper French construction; but the term Jave-la-Grande is merely the translation of Java Maior, the Portuguese for Marco Polo's Java Major.
[* See remark [above].]