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Notwithstanding the amount of research into the documentary annals of the world's history that has taken place during the past quarter of a century it is still impossible to assign any definite date to the discovery of Australia.

From earliest times there have been traditions, probably engendered more by the spirit of prophecy than by fact, of the existence of a Great South Land. Aristotle, Strabo, and others have expressed the opinion that there existed south of the Equator areas of land at least equal in extent to those above it. In the "Astronomicon" of Manilius we find the lines—

These statements, however, were merely essays in the region of probabilities, and had not any known basis of fact. But to come down to a later period, it is possible to show from early manuscript maps and other sources that this belief in a southern continent was entertained long before the discoveries of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. The Vicomte de Santarem, in his "Essaisur l'histoire de la cosmographie et de la cartographie du moyen âge," gives a list of these maps, upon which are to be found vague markings of an inhabited country described as the "opposite earth," which could not be reached owing to the torrid zone; and he points out that "the cartographers of the Middle Ages have submitted that as a reality which, even to the geographers of antiquity, was merely a theory." Unfortunately, every effort to discover manuscripts that would bear out the assertions of these maps has so far been without success. Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, as the result of his travels, certainly did advance the claims of the Chinese to the discovery of a Great South Land, and there is perhaps some justification for the statement, as we know that for centuries prior to the European advent that nation had established extensive trade relations with the islands of the East Indies. That the country mentioned was Australia is, however, out of the question. Marsden's explanation is probably the right one—that it refers to a portion of Cambodia, the products of which are gold, spices, and elephants.

"In the early engraved maps of the sixteenth century, however," says R. H. Major, "we see the effects of this description exhibited in a form calculated to startle the inquirer respecting the early indications of Australia. On these maps we find laid down an extensive development of the great Terra Australis Incognita trending northward to New Guinea, with which on some of these maps it is made to be continuous, while on others it is divided from it."

No doubt the conviction, resulting from these rumours, strengthened by the success of Columbus and fired by thoughts of the golden trophies of Cortés, induced the hardy maritime adventurers of the age—Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, and Spanish—to scour the seas, hoping to prove the conviction true and anxious to benefit by the boundless treasure that new countries might possess."

In the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris there was unearthed some years ago an old wooden globe on which is inscribed the statement that the Terra Australis was discovered in 1499. As the date ascribed to this globe is 1535, it really fails as an instrument of proof, but quite recently Mr. E. A. Petherick, the Commonwealth Archivist, has announced that evidence is forthcoming to prove that Amerigo Vespucci must have touched some part of Australia during his return voyage to Cadiz after the discovery of Brazil in 1499. So far the complete case in favour of that contention has not been presented, so that it is not possible to speak with any decision, but it certainly would record a remarkable achievement for those far-off days if, within sixteen months in a small sailing vessel, Vespucci could have sailed from Spain to Brazil, along the coast from Cape St. Roque to the Amazon, then back again round Cape Horn and across the Pacific Ocean to Australia, thence proceeding by way of the Cape of Good Hope back to Cadiz—a voyage of close upon 30,000 miles!

Early in the sixteenth century we begin to find evidences of a more solid character. By this time the Portuguese and other navigators had found a way by sea round the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, and extensive trade relations were being developed. This