Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

OCEANIC EXPLORATION. 9Beyond the zone ofnavigation utilised by the Acapulco galleons, nearly all tliecquatoiial archipelagoes of the South Sea were at least sighted by the Spanishmariners during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1567 Mendana deNeyra saw the groups at present known by the name of the Ellice and SolomonIslands ; in 1595 Hurtado de Mendoza discovered the Marquesas ; in IGOG Queiroasailed through the Low Archipelago, visited the New Hebrides, and skirted theAustralian seaboard, which he claimed to have first observed, although his voyageto these shores had been anticipated by the Portuguese pilot Godinho de Eredia,and in 1531 even \>y the Provencal Guillaume le Testu.*Lastly, Torres, who hadaccompanied the Queiros expedition, successfully navigated the dangerous labyrinthof reefs and islets separating Australia from New Guinea. His name hasbeen justly given to the strait which, with rare boldness and seamanship, hetraversed from sea to sea in the space of two months.But Spaniards and Portuguese had no longer the monopoly of these oceanicregions, which had been shared between them by the famous Bull of Alexander VI.The illustrious English seafarer, Francis Drake, repeated fifty-seven years laterthe exploit of Magellan, first circumnavigator of the globe, and after him theroutes of the Pacific were further surveyed by Cavendish and some Dutchmariners. By the close of the sixteenth century Dutch traders had even alreadyfounded factories in Java, whence their power gradually spread from island toisland, everywhere displacing that of the Portuguese. In their turn the Dutchsailors took up the work of discovery in the southern waters, Tasman especiallyenlarging our knowledge of the Austral lands. Thus were revealed to thewestern world the west coast of Australia as far as Torres Strait, Tasmania withits basalt headland, New Zealand and its active volcanoes.But such was at thattime the intensity of international rivalries between the chief trading peoples,that the discoveries already made by the Spanish or Portuguese pioneers remainedunknown to or overlooked by the Netherlandish explorers. Although Torres hadactually demonstrated the existence of a passage separating Australia from NewGuinea, Tasman maintained forty years later that both lands belonged to thesame continent.The second half of the eighteenth century was the decisive epoch in the scientificexploration of the South Sea Islands. Henceforth exploring expeditions were nolonger undertaken in the interests of a single nation, or of some powerful tradingcompany, but rather for the benefit of the whole of the civilised world. Atthe same time the more accurate observations now made imparted far greaterauthority to the reports of the explorers themselves. The longitudes in thesouthern waters were for the first time determined by the method of lunar distancesby Wallis in 1766.Thenceforth the enormous errors of the early seafarers,with discrepancies of from one thousand to two thousand miles, became impossible,and mariners were no longer doomed to beat about for weeks and months together insearch of large archipelagoes already reported by their predecessors. Owing to thisuncertainty, numerous explorers had to abandon the attempt to sight the Solomon* Major. Juin-iia! of /!„• R.„j,(l Geui/riiphirn/ Surh-I,/, IST'i.