The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known

by Joseph Jacobs

The history of geographical discovery in America is thus in large measure a history of conquest. Men got to know both coast-line and interior while endeavouring either to trade or to settle where nature was propitious, or the country afforded mineral or vegetable wealth that could be easily transported. Of the coast early knowledge was acquired for geography; but where the continent broadens out either north or south, making the interior inaccessible for trade purposes with the coasts, ignorance remained even down to the present century. Even to the present day the country south of the valley of the Amazon is perhaps as little known as any portion of the earth's surface, while, as we have seen, it was not till the early years of this century that any knowledge was acquired of the huge tract of country between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. It was the natural expansion of the United States, rendered possible by the cession of this tract to the States by Napoleon in 1803, that brought it within the knowledge of all. That expansion was chiefly due to the improved methods of communication which steam has given to mankind only within this century. But for this the region east of the Rocky Mountains would possibly be as little known to Europeans, even at the present day, as the Soudan or Somaliland. It is owing to this natural expansion of the States, and in minor measure of Canada, that few great names of geographical explorers are connected with our knowledge of the interior of North America. Unknown settlers have been the pioneers of geography, and not as elsewhere has the reverse been the case. In the two other continents whose geographical history we have still to trace, Australia and Africa, explorers have preceded settlers or conquerors, and we can generally follow the course of geographical discovery in their case without the necessity of discussing their political history.

[Authorities: Winsor, From Cartier to Frontenac; Gelcich, in Mittheilungen of Geographical Society of Vienna, 1892.]

CHAPTER X

AUSTRALIA AND THE SOUTH SEAS—TASMAN AND COOK

If one looks at the west coast of Australia one is struck by the large number of Dutch names which are jotted down the coast. There is Hoog Island, Diemen's Bay, Houtman's Abrolhos, De Wit land, and the Archipelago of Nuyts, besides Dirk Hartog's Island and Cape Leeuwin. To the extreme north we find the Gulf of Carpentaria, and to the extreme south the island which used to be called Van Diemen's Land. It is not altogether to be wondered at that almost to the middle of this century the land we now call Australia was tolerably well known as New Holland. If the Dutch had struck the more fertile eastern shores of the Australian continent, it might have been called with reason New Holland to the present day; but there is scarcely any long coast-line of the world so inhospitable and so little promising as that of Western Australia, and one can easily understand how the Dutch, though they explored it, did not care to take possession of it.

But though the Dutch were the first to explore any considerable stretch of Australian coast, they were by no means the first to sight it. As early as 1542 a Spanish expedition under Luis Lopez de Villalobos, was despatched to follow up the discoveries of Magellan in the Pacific Ocean within the Spanish sphere of influence. He discovered several of the islands of Polynesia, and attempted to seize the Philippines, but his fleet had to return to New Spain. One of the ships coasted along an island

to which was given the name of New Guinea, and was thought to be part of the great unknown southern land which Ptolemy had imagined to exist in the south of the Indian Ocean, and to be connected in some way with Tierra del Fuego. Curiosity was thus aroused, and in 1606 Pedro de Quiros was despatched on a voyage to the South Seas with three ships. He discovered the New Hebrides, and believed it formed part of the southern continent, and he therefore named it Australia del Espiritu Santo, and hastened home to obtain the viceroyalty of this new possession. One of his ships got separated from him, and the commander, Luys Vaz de Torres, sailed farther to the south-west, and thereby learned that the New Australia was not a continent but an island. He proceeded farther till he came to New Guinea, which he coasted along the south coast, and seeing land to the south of him, he thus passed through the straits since named after him, and was probably the first European to see the continent of Australia. In the very same year (1606) the Dutch yacht named the Duyfken is said to have coasted along the south and west coasts of New Guinea nearly a thousand miles, till they reached Cape Keerweer, or "turn again." This was probably the north-west coast of Australia. In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century the Dutch followed the west coast of Australia with as much industry as the Portuguese had done with the west coast of Africa, leaving up to the present day signs of their explorations in the names of islands, bays, and capes. Dirk Hartog, in the Endraaght, discovered that Land which is named after his ship, and the cape and roadstead named after himself, in 1616. Jan Edels left his name upon the western coast in 1619; while, three years later, a ship named the Lioness or Leeuwin reached the most western point of the continent, to which its name is still attached. Five years later, in 1627, De Nuyts coasted round the south coast of Australia; while in the same year a Dutch commander named Carpenter discovered and gave his name to the immense indentation still known as the Gulf of Carpentaria.

But still more important discoveries were made in 1642 by an expedition sent out from Batavia under ABEL JANSSEN TASMAN to investigate the real extent of the southern land. After the voyages of the Leeuwin and De Nuyts it was seen that the southern coast of the new land trended to the east, instead of working round to the west, as would have been the case if Ptolemy's views had been correct. Tasman's problem was to discover whether it was connected with the great southern land assumed to lie to the south of South America. Tasman first sailed from Mauritius, and then directing his course to the south-east, going much more south than Cape Leeuwin, at last reached land in latitude 43.30° and longitude 163.50°. This he called Van Diemen's Land, after the name of the Governor-General of Batavia, and it was assumed that this joined on to the land already discovered by De Nuyts. Sailing farther to the eastward, Tasman came out into the open sea again, and thus appeared to prove that the newly discovered land was not connected with the great unknown continent round the south pole.

But he soon came across land which might possibly answer to that description, and he called it Staaten Land, in honour of the States-General of the Netherlands. This was undoubtedly some part of New Zealand. Still steering eastward, but with a more northerly trend, Tasman discovered several islands in the Pacific, and ultimately reached Batavia after touching on New Guinea. His discoveries were a great advance on previous knowledge; he had at any rate reduced the possible dimensions of the unknown continent of the south within narrow limits, and his discoveries were justly inscribed upon the map of the world cut in stone upon the new Staathaus in Amsterdam, in which the name New Holland was given by order of the States-General to the western part of the "terra Australis." When England for a time became joined on to Holland under the rule of William III., William Dampier was despatched to New Holland to make further discoveries. He retraced the explorations of the Dutch from Dirk Hartog's Bay to New Guinea, and appears to have been the first European to have noticed the habits of the kangaroo; otherwise his voyage did not add much to geographical knowledge, though when he left the coasts of New Guinea he steered between New England and New Ireland.