Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

6 AUSTRALASIA.always within sight of land, they nevertheless advanced far towai'ds the east.before the first century of the vulgar era, tradition makes no reference to thegreat discovery of the regularly alternating movement of the trade winds andmonsoons, by means of which mariners were first enabled boldly to venture on thehigh seas, running fearlessly before the wind from the African and Arabianseaboard to that of the Indian peninsiila.ButThere can, however, be little doubt thatthese alternating aerial currents were already well known to the Arab andPhoenician navigators and utilised by them in their distant expeditions to the farEgyptian pilot, whose name was even given to the two regular easterly andwesterly winds.During the Roman epoch the islands and the Asiatic peninsulas of the IndianOcean were better known than twelve centuries later, that is, on the eve of Vascode Gama's expedition.The Western traders were well acquainted with Taprobana(Ceylon), and the Golden Chersonese (Malay peninsula), as well as the island of"Barley," the present Java. Their commercial relations reached as far as theMoluccas, for the clove had already made its ai^pearance on the tables of wealthyRomans.During the night watch mariners beguiled the hours with narratives ofmarvellous adventures, in which the flights of fancy became intermingled withmore or less truthful descriptions of j)eoples, animals, and plants actually seen bythe relaters on their travels. From the seafarers of diverse nations, who tradedin the service of Rome, these tales passed in a more or less modified form to theArab mariners of mediaeval times, and from this source, with its germ of truth,were developed many of the marvellous stories embodied in the Thousand and OneNights.The modern era of exploration for the oceanic regions coincides with that ofthe New World. In 1498, Vasco de Gama, after rounding the Cape of GoodHope, crossed the Indian Ocean straight to Calicut on the Malabar coast. Twoyears afterwards Diego Dias, brother of the other Dias who had first doubled thesame cape, discovered S. Lourenco (Madagascar), whQe others, pushing stilleastwards, reached the shores of Further India. In 1509 Malacca had alreadybecome a centre of Portuguese dominion, and henceforth all the Asiatic vesselscalling at that emporium were obliged to accept the services of a Portuguesepilot.The Eastern Archipelago, which had already been visited by the Italian,Bartema, was soon embraced by the commercial empire of Lisbon ; but oncemasters of the valuable Spice Islands, the Portuguese mariners seldom venturedinto the unknown waters farther east.To another nation, represented, however,east. But the merit of the discovery was attributed to Hippalos, the Greco-by the Portuguese, Magellan, fell the glory of first completing the circumnavigationof the globe, across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Following thewestern route round South America, instead of the eastern taken by Vasco deGama, Magellan traversed in 1520 the strait that bears his name, and first ofEuropeans penetrated into the South Pacific, sailing in search of the easternmostPortuguese factories. By a strange accident his ships traversed an open space of