XIII.—Further Facts in the History of the Early Discovery of Australia

Extract

In the year 1861 I had the satisfaction of laying before the Society of Antiquaries, and thereby making known to the world for the first time, the important fact that the great continental island of Australia had been discovered in the year 1601 by a Portuguese navigator, named Manoel Godinho de Eredia. Up to that time the earliest authenticated discovery of any part of the great southern land was that made a little to the west and south of Cape York by the commander of the Dutch yacht the Duyfhen, or Dove, about the month of March 1606. Thus the fact which I announced in 1861 gave a date to the first authenticated discovery of Australia earlier by five years than that which had been previously accepted in history, and transferred the honour of that discovery from Holland to Portugal. The document on which this fact, so entirely new to the world, was based, was a MS. Mappe-monde in the British Museum, in which, on the northwest corner of a country which could be shown beyond all question to be Australia, stood a legend in Portuguese to the following effect:— “Nuça antara was discovered in the year 1601 by Manoel Godinho de Eredia, by command of the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha.” This mappe-monde had the great disadvantage of being only a copy, possibly made even in the present century, from one the geography of which proved it to be some two centuries older. Still, the mere fact of its being a copy laid it open to a variety of possible objections, which fortunately I was able to forestall by arguments that I believe to be unanswerable, and which I think I need not repeat now, as they are already printed in the “Archaeologia,” vol. xxxviii. I will merely say that I had the good fortune at the time to find a happy confirmation of what was stated in the map in a little printed work which described the discoverer as a learned cosmographer and skilful captain, who had received a special commission from the Viceroy at Goa to make explorations for gold mines, and at the same time to verify the descriptions of the southern islands.