Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... while utterly distinct from the earlier and more valuable manuscript documents, they precede the period of what, for want of a better word, I must call the authenticated discovery of Australia, i.e.} made by a known ship or navigator. The earliest authenticated discovery, in this sense of the word, was, till recently, supposed to have been made on the 18th of November, 1605, by the Dutch yacht, the Duyflien, which had been despatched from Bantam to explore the island of New Guinea, and which sailed along what was thought to be the west side of that country to 19 Q of south latitude. In the year 1861, however, it was my good fortune to light upon a manuscript mappemonde in the British Museum which enabled me to carry back that first authenticated discovery to the year 1601, and to transfer the honour thereof from the' Dutch to] the Portuguese, by whom the discovery, although unauthenticated by the known name of the ship or navigator, had been made, as I shall presently show, some seventy years before. On the mappe-monde in question was delineated the northwest portion of Australia, and on the extreme north was the following legend: " Nuca Antara foi descuberta o anno 1601 por mano {sic) el godhino de Evedia (sic) por mandado de (sic) Vico Bey Aives (sic) de Saldaha (sic): " which translated is: " Nuca Antara (the local name) was discovered in the year 1601 by Manoel Godinho de Eredia, by command of the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha." Unfortunately, the map is only a copy, apparently, as I have since discovered from a letter addressed to Navarrete by the Vicomte de Santarem in 1835, of a map in a MS. Atlas, made in the 17th century by one Teixeira, and hence the blunders marked by " sic." For this reason I could only have adduced it for..."
