Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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When the seventeenth century was in its early youth, that vast ocean which stretches from Asia to the Antarctic was scarcely known by navigators. The coasts of Eastern Africa, of India, and the archipelago of islands to the eastward, were partially explored; but while there was a very strong belief that a land existed in the southern hemisphere, it was an inspiration only based on probabilities. The pilots and map-makers put down, as well as they were able, the discoveries already made; must there not be some great island or continent to balance all that waste of water which they were forced to place on the southern hemisphere? Terra Australis, “the Southern Land,” was therefore in a sense discovered before its discovery, just as the late Sir Roderick Murchison predicted gold there before Hargreaves found it.102

In the year 1606, Pedro Fernando de Quiros started from Peru on a voyage of discovery to the westward. He found some important islands, to which he gave the name “Australia del Espiritu Santo,” and which are now believed to have been part of the New Hebrides group. The vessel of his second in command became separated in consequence of a storm, and by this Luis vas Torres in consequence reached New Guinea and Australia proper, besides what is now known as Torres Straits, which channel separates them. The same year a Dutch vessel coasted about the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it is to the persistent efforts of the navigators of Holland that the Australian coasts became well explored. From 1616, at intervals, till 1644, they instigated many voyages, the leading ones of which were the two made by Tasman, in the second of which he circumnavigated Australia. “New Holland” was the title long applied to the western part of Australia—sometimes, indeed, to the whole country.