Indian policy. The English East India Company was founded by Elizabeth
in 1600, and as early as 1619 had forced the Dutch to allow them to
take a third share of the profits of the Spice Islands. In order
to do this several English planters settled at Amboyna, but within
four years trade rivalries had reached such a pitch that the Dutch
murdered some of these merchants and drove the rest from the islands.
As a consequence the English Company devoted its attention to the
mainland of India itself, where they soon obtained possession of
Madras and Bombay, and left the islands of the Indian Ocean mainly
in possession of the Dutch. We shall see later the effect of this
upon the history of geography, for it was owing to their possession
of the East India Islands that the Dutch were practically the
discoverers of Australia. One result of the Dutch East India policy
has left its traces even to the present day. In 1651 they established
a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, which only fell into English
hands during the Napoleonic wars, when Napoleon held Holland.

Meanwhile the English had not lost sight of the possibilities of
the North-East Passage, if not for reaching the Spice Islands,
at any rate as a means of tapping the overland route to China,
hitherto monopolised by the Genoese. In 1558 an English gentleman,
named Anthony Jenkinson, was sent as ambassador to the Czar of
Muscovy, and travelled from Moscow as far as Bokhara; but he was
not very fortunate in his venture, and England had to be content
for some time to receive her Indian and Chinese goods from the
Venetian argosies as before. But at last they saw no reason why
they should not attempt direct relations with the East. A company of
Levant merchants was formed in 1583 to open out direct communications
with Aleppo, Bagdad, Ormuz, and Goa. They were unsuccessful at the
two latter places owing to the jealousy of the Portuguese, but
they made arrangements for cheaper transit of Eastern goods to
England, and in 1587 the last of the Venetian argosies, a great
vessel of eleven hundred tons, was wrecked off the Isle of Wight.
Henceforth the English conducted their own business with the East,
and Venetian and Portuguese monopoly was at an end.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN MAP OF ASIA, 1737.]

But the journeys of Chancellor and Jenkinson to the Court of Moscow
had more far-reaching effects; the Russians themselves were thereby
led to contemplate utilising their proximity to one of the best
known routes to the Far East. Shortly after Jenkinson's visit, the
Czar, Ivan the Terrible, began extending his dominions eastward,
sending at first a number of troops to accompany the Russian merchant
Strogonof as far as the Obi in search of sables. Among the troops
were a corps of six thousand Cossacks commanded by one named Vassili
Yermak, who, finding the Tartars an easy prey, determined at first
to set up a new kingdom for himself. In 1579 he was successful in
overcoming the Tartars and their chief town Sibir, near Tobolsk;
but, finding it difficult to retain his position, determined to
return to his allegiance to the Czar on condition of being supported.
This was readily granted, and from that time onward the Russians
steadily pushed on through to the unknown country of the north
of Asia, since named after the little town conquered by Yermak,
of which scarcely any traces now remain. As early as 1639 they
had reached the Pacific under Kupilof. A force was sent out from
Yakutz, on the Lena, in 1643, which reached the Amur, and thus
Russians came for the first time in contact with the Chinese, and
a new method of reaching Cathay was thus obtained, while geography
gained the knowledge of the extent of Northern Asia. For, about
the same time (in 1648), the Arctic Ocean was reached on the north
shores of Siberia, and a fleet under the Cossack Dishinef sailed
from Kolyma and reached as far as the straits known by the name
of Behring. It was not, however, till fifty years afterwards, in
1696, that the Russians reached Kamtschatka.

Notwithstanding the access of knowledge which had been gained by
these successive bold pushes towards north and east, it still remained
uncertain whether Siberia did not join on to the northern part of
the New World discovered by Columbus and Amerigo, and in 1728 Peter
the Great sent out an expedition under VITUS BEHRING, a Dane in the
Russian service, with the express aim of ascertaining this point.
He reached Kamtschatka, and there built two vessels as directed by
the Czar, and started on his voyage northward, coasting along the
land. When he reached a little beyond 67 deg. N., he found no land
to the north or east, and conceived he had reached the end of the
continent. As a matter of fact, he was within thirty miles of the
west coast of America; but of this he does not seem to have been
aware, being content with solving the special problem put before
him by the Czar. The strait thus discovered by Behring, though not
known by him to be a strait, has ever since been known by his name.
In 1741, however, Behring again set out on a voyage of discovery to
ascertain how far to the east America was, and within a fortnight
had come within sight of the lofty mountain named by him Mount
St. Elias. Behring himself died upon this voyage, on an island
also named after him; he had at last solved the relation between
the Old and the New Worlds.

These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage
of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the
last three chapters. His explorations were undertaken mainly for
scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas
all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch
were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and
Cathay. The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the
slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish, by
adopting Columbus's bold idea, had attempted it by the western
route, and under Magellan's still bolder conception had equally
succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought
for a north-west passage to the Moluccas; while the English and
Dutch attempted a northeasterly route. In both directions the icy
barrier of the north prevented success. It was reserved, as we shall
see, for the present century to complete the North-West Passage
under Maclure, and the North-East by Nordenskiold, sailing with
quite different motives to those which first brought the mariners
of England, France, and Holland within the Arctic Circle.

The net result of all these attempts by the nations of Europe to
wrest from the Venetians the monopoly of the Eastern trade was to
add to geography the knowledge of the existence of a New World
intervening between the western shores of Europe and the eastern
shores of Asia. We have yet to learn the means by which the New
World thus discovered became explored and possessed by the European
nations.

[_Authorities:_ Cooley and Beazeley, _John and Sebastian Cabot_,
1898.]




CHAPTER IX

THE PARTITION OF AMERICA

We have hitherto been dealing with the discoveries made by Spanish
and Portuguese along the coast of the New World, but early in the
sixteenth century they began to put foot on _terra firma_ and explore
the interior. As early as 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa ascended the
highest peak in the range running from the Isthmus of Panama, and
saw for the first time by European eyes the great ocean afterwards
to be named by Magellan the Pacific. He there heard that the country
to the south extended without end, and was inhabited by great nations,
with an abundance of gold. Among his companions who heard of this
golden country, or El Dorado, was one Francisco Pizarro, who was
destined to test the report. But a similar report had reached the ears
of Diego Velasquez, governor of Cuba, as to a great nation possessed
of much gold to the north of Darien. He accordingly despatched
his lieutenant Hernando Cortes in 1519 to investigate, with ten
ships, six hundred and fifty men, and some eighteen horses. When
he landed at the port named by him Vera Cruz, the appearance of
his men, and more especially of his horses, astonished and alarmed
the natives of Mexico, then a large and semi-civilised state under
the rule of Montezuma, the last representative of the Aztecs, who
in the twelfth century had succeeded the Toltecs, a people that had
settled on the Mexican tableland as early probably as the seventh
century, introducing the use of metals and roads and many of the
elements of civilisation. Montezuma is reported to have been able
to range no less than two hundred thousand men under his banners,
but he showed his opinion of the Spaniards by sending them costly
presents, gold and silver and costly stuffs. This only aroused
the cupidity of Cortes, who determined to make a bold stroke for
the conquest of such a rich prize. He burnt his ships and advanced
into the interior of the country, conquering on his way the tribe
of the Tlascalans, who had been at war with the Mexicans, but,
when conquered, were ready to assist him against them. With their
aid he succeeded in seizing the Mexican king, who was forced to
yield a huge tribute. After many struggles Cortes found himself
master of the capital, and of all the resources of the Mexican
Empire (1521). These he hastened to place at the feet of the Emperor
Charles V., who appointed him Governor and Captain-General of Mexico.
It is characteristic throughout the history of the New World, that
none of the soldiers of fortune who found it such an easy prey ever
thought of setting up an empire for himself. This is a testimony
to the influence national feeling had upon the minds even of the
most lawless, and the result was that Europe and European ideas
were brought over into America, or rather the New World became
tributary to Europe.

As soon as Cortes had established himself he fitted out expeditions
to explore the country, and himself reached Honduras after a remarkable
journey for over 1000 miles, in which he was only guided by a map on
cotton cloth, on which the Cacique of Tabasco had painted all the
towns, rivers, and mountains of the country as far as Nicaragua. He
also despatched a small fleet under Alvarro de Saavedra to support
a Spanish expedition which had been sent to the Moluccas under
Sebastian del Cano, and which arrived at Tidor in 1527, to the
astonishment of Spanish and Portuguese alike when they heard he
had started from New Castile. In 1536, Cortes, who had been in
the meantime shorn of much of his power, conducted an expedition
by sea along the north-west coast of Mexico, and reached what he
considered to be a great island. He identified this with an imaginary
island in the Far East, near the terrestrial paradise to which
the name of California had been given in a contemporary romance.
Thus, owing to Cortes, almost the whole of Central America had
become known before his death in 1540. Similarly, at a much earlier
period, Ponce de Leon had thought he had discovered another great
island in Florida in 1512, whither he had gone in search of Bayuca,
a fabled island of the Indians, in which they stated was a fountain
of eternal youth. At the time of Cortes' first attempt on Mexico,
Pineda had coasted round Florida, and connected it with the rest
of the coast of Mexico, which he traversed as far as Vera Cruz.

The exploits of Cortes were all important in their effects. He had
proved with what ease a handful of men might overcome an empire and
gain unparalleled riches. Francisco Pizarro was encouraged by the
success of Cortes to attempt the discovery of the El Dorado he had
heard of when on Balboa's expedition. With a companion named Diego
de Almegro he made several coasting expeditions down the northwest
coast of South America, during which they heard of the empire of
the Incas on the plateau of Peru. They also obtained sufficient
gold and silver to raise their hopes of the riches of the country,
and returned to Spain to report to the Emperor. Pizarro obtained
permission from Charles V. to attempt the conquest of Peru, of which
he was named Governor and Captain-General, on condition of paying a
tribute of one-fifth of the treasure he might obtain. He started
in February 1531 with a small force of 180 men, of whom thirty-six
were horsemen. Adopting the policy of Cortes, he pushed directly
for the capital Cuzco, where they managed to seize Atahualpa, the
Inca of the time. He attempted to ransom himself by agreeing to
fill the room in which he was confined, twenty-two feet long by
sixteen wide, with bars of gold as high as the hand could reach.
He carried out this prodigious promise, and Pizarro's companions
found themselves in possession of booty equal to three millions
sterling.

Atahualpa was, however, not released, but condemned to death on
a frivolous pretext, while Pizarro dismissed his followers, fully
confident that the wealth they carried off would attract as many
men as he could desire to El Dorado. He settled himself at Lima,
near the coast, in 1534. Meanwhile Almegro had been despatched
south, and made himself master of Chili. Another expedition in
1539 was conducted by Pizarro's brother Gonzales across the Andes,
and reached the sources of the Amazon, which one of his companions,
Francisco de Orellana, traversed as far as the mouth. This he reached
in August 1541, after a voyage of one thousand leagues. The river
was named after Orellana, but, from reports he made of the existence
of a tribe of female warriors, was afterwards known as the river
of the Amazons. The author spread reports of another El Dorado to
the north, in which the roofs of the temples were covered with
gold. This report afterwards led to the disastrous expedition of
Sir Walter Raleigh to Guiana. By his voyage Orellana connected the
Spanish and Portuguese "spheres of influence" in the New World of
Amerigo. By the year 1540 the main outlines of Central and South
America and something of the interior had been made known by the
Spanish adventurers within half a century of Columbus' first voyage.
Owing to the papal bull Portugal possessed Brazil, but all the
rest of the huge stretch of country was claimed for Spain. The
Portuguese wisely treated Brazil as an outlet for their overflowing
population, which settled there in large numbers and established
plantations. The Spaniards, on the other hand, only regarded their
huge possessions as exclusive markets to be merely visited by them.
Rich mines of gold, silver, and mercury were discovered in Mexico
and Peru, especially in the far-famed mines of Potosi, and these
were exploited entirely in the interests of Spain, which acted as a
sieve by which the precious metals were poured into Europe, raising
prices throughout the Old World. In return European merchandise was
sent in the return voyages of the Spanish galleons to New Spain,
which could only buy Flemish cloth, for example, through Spanish
intermediaries, who raised its price to three times the original
cost. This short-sighted policy on the part of Spain naturally
encouraged smuggling, and attracted the ships of all nations towards
that pursuit.

We have already seen the first attempts of the French and English
in the exploration of the north-east coast of North America; but
during the sixteenth century very little was done to settle on
such inhospitable shores, which did not offer anything like the
rich prizes that Tropical America afforded. Neither the exploration
of Cartier in 1534, or that of the Cabots much earlier, was followed
by any attempt to possess the land. Breton fishermen visited the
fisheries off Newfoundland, and various explorers attempted to find
openings which would give them a north-west passage, but otherwise
the more northerly part of the continent was left unoccupied till
the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first town founded was
that of St. Augustine, in Florida, in 1565, but this was destroyed
three years later by a French expedition. Sir Walter Raleigh attempted
to found a colony in 1584 near where Virginia now stands, but it
failed after three years, and it was not till the reign of James
I. that an organised attempt was made by England to establish
plantations, as they were then called, on the North American coast.

Two Chartered Companies, the one to the north named the Plymouth
Company, and the one to the south named the London Company (both
founded in 1606), nominally divided between them all the coast
from Nova Scotia to Florida. These large tracts of country were
during the seventeenth century slowly parcelled out into smaller
states, mainly Puritan in the north (New England), High Church
and Catholic in the south (Virginia and Maryland). But between the
two, and on the banks of the Hudson and the Delaware, two other
European nations had also formed plantations--the Dutch along the
Hudson from 1609 forming the New Netherlands, and the Swedes from
1636 along the Delaware forming New Sweden. The latter, however,
lasted only a few years, and was absorbed by the Dutch in 1655.
The capital of New Netherlands was established on Manhattan Island,
to the south of the palisade still known as Wall Street, and the
city was named New Amsterdam. The Hudson is such an important artery
of commerce between the Atlantic and the great lakes, that this
wedge between the two sets of English colonies would have been a
bar to any future progress. This was recognised by Charles II.,
who in 1664 despatched an expedition to demand its surrender, even
though England and Holland were at that time at peace. New Amsterdam
was taken, and named New York, after the king's brother, the Duke
of York, afterwards James II. New Sweden, which at the same time
fell into the English hands, was sold as a proprietary plantation
to a Jersey man, Sir George Carteret, and to a Quaker, William
Penn. By this somewhat high-handed procedure the whole coast-line
down to Florida was in English hands.

Both the London and Plymouth Companies had started to form plantations
in 1607, and in that very year the French made their first effective
settlements in America, at Port Royal and at Nova Scotia, then
called Arcadie; while, the following year, Samuel de Champlain
made settlements at Quebec, and founded French Canada. He explored
the lake country, and established settlements down the banks of the
St. Lawrence, along which French activity for a long time confined
itself. Between the French and the English settlements roved the
warlike Five Nations of the Iroquois Indians, and Champlain, whose
settlements were in the country of the Algonquins, was obliged
to take their part and make the Iroquois the enemies of France,
which had important effects upon the final struggle between England
and France in the eighteenth century. The French continued their
exploration of the interior of the continent. In 1673 Marquette
discovered the Mississippi (Missi Sepe, "the great water"), and
descended it as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, but the work of
exploring the Mississippi valley was undertaken by Robert de la
Salle. He had already discovered the Ohio and Illinois rivers, and
in three expeditions, between 1680 and 1682, succeeded in working his
way right down to the mouth of the Mississippi, giving to the huge
tract of country which he had thus traversed the name of Louisiana,
after Louis XIV.

France thenceforth claimed the whole _hinterland_, as we should
now call it, of North America, the English being confined to the
comparatively narrow strip of country east of the Alleghanies. New
Orleans was founded at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1716, and
named after the Prince Regent; and French activity ranged between
Quebec and New Orleans, leaving many traces even to the present
day, in French names like Mobile, Detroit, and the like, through
the intervening country. The situation at the commencement of the
eighteenth century was remarkably similar to that of the Gold Coast
in Africa at the end of the nineteenth. The French persistently
attempted to encroach upon the English sphere of influence, and it
was in attempting to define the two spheres that George Washington
learned his first lesson in diplomacy and strategy. The French and
English American colonies were almost perpetually at war with one
another, the objective being the spot where Pittsburg now stands,
which was regarded as the gate of the west, overlooking as it did
the valley of the Ohio. Here Duquesne founded the fort named after
himself, and it was not till 1758 that this was finally wrested
from French hands; while, in the following year, Wolfe, by his
capture of Quebec, overthrew the whole French power in North America.
Throughout the long fight the English had been much assisted by
the guerilla warfare of the Iroquois against the French.

By the Treaty of Paris in 1763 the whole of French America was
ceded to England, which also obtained possession of Florida from
Spain, in exchange for the Philippines, captured during the war.
As a compensation all the country west of the Mississippi became
joined on to the Spanish possessions in Mexico. These of course
became, nominally French when Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed
on the Spanish throne, but Napoleon sold them to the United States
in 1803, so that no barrier existed to the westward spread of the
States. Long previously to this, a Chartered Company had been formed
in 1670, with Prince Rupert at its head, to trade with the Indians
for furs in Hudson's Bay, then and for some time afterwards called
Rupertsland. The Hudson Bay Company gradually extended its knowledge
of the northerly parts of America towards the Rocky Mountains,
but it was not till 1740 that Varenne de la Varanderye discovered
their extent. In 1769-71 a fur trader named Hearne traced the river
Coppermine to the sea, while it was not till 1793 that Mr. (after
Sir A.) Mackenzie discovered the river now named after him, and
crossed the continent of North America from Atlantic to Pacific.
One of the reasons for this late exploration of the north-west of
North America was a geographical myth started by a Spanish voyager
named Juan de Fuca as early as 1592. Coasting as far as Vancouver
Island, he entered the inlet to the south of it, and not being
able to see land to the north, brought back a report of a huge sea
spreading over all that part of the country, which most geographers
assumed to pass over into Hudson Bay or the neighbourhood. It was
this report as much as anything which encouraged hopes of finding
the north-west passage in a latitude low enough to be free from
ice.

As soon as the United States got possession of the land west of
the Mississippi they began to explore it, and between 1804 and
1807 Lewis and Clarke had explored the whole basin of the Missouri,
while Pike had investigated the country between the sources of the
Mississippi and the Red River. We have already seen that Behring
had carried over Russian investigation and dominion into Alaska,
and it was in order to avoid her encroachments down towards the
Californian coast that President Monroe put forth in 1823 the doctrine
that no further colonisation of the Americas would be permitted by
the United States. In this year Russia agreed to limit her claims
to the country north of 54.40 deg.. The States subsequently acquired
California and other adjoining states during their war with Mexico
in 1848, just before gold was discovered in the Sacramento valley.
The land between California and Alaska was held in joint possession
between Great Britain and the States, and was known as the Oregon
Territory. Lewis and Clarke had explored the Columbia River, while
Vancouver had much earlier examined the island which now bears his
name, so that both countries appear to have some rights of discovery
to the district. At one time the inhabitants of the States were
inclined to claim all the country as far as the Russian boundary
54.40 deg., and a war-cry arose "54.40 deg. or fight;" but in 1846 the
territory was divided by the 49th parallel, and at this date we may
say the partition of America was complete, and all that remained
to be known of it was the ice-bound northern coast, over which so
much heroic enterprise has been displayed.

The history of geographical discovery in America is thus in large
measure a history of conquest. Men got to know both coast-line and
interior while endeavouring either to trade or to settle where
nature was propitious, or the country afforded mineral or vegetable
wealth that could be easily transported. Of the coast early knowledge
was acquired for geography; but where the continent broadens out
either north or south, making the interior inaccessible for trade
purposes with the coasts, ignorance remained even down to the present
century. Even to the present day the country south of the valley
of the Amazon is perhaps as little known as any portion of the
earth's surface, while, as we have seen, it was not till the early
years of this century that any knowledge was acquired of the huge
tract of country between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.
It was the natural expansion of the United States, rendered possible
by the cession of this tract to the States by Napoleon in 1803,
that brought it within the knowledge of all. That expansion was
chiefly due to the improved methods of communication which steam
has given to mankind only within this century. But for this the
region east of the Rocky Mountains would possibly be as little
known to Europeans, even at the present day, as the Soudan or
Somaliland. It is owing to this natural expansion of the States,
and in minor measure of Canada, that few great names of geographical
explorers are connected with our knowledge of the interior of North
America. Unknown settlers have been the pioneers of geography,
and not as elsewhere has the reverse been the case. In the two
other continents whose geographical history we have still to trace,
Australia and Africa, explorers have preceded settlers or conquerors,
and we can generally follow the course of geographical discovery
in their case without the necessity of discussing their political
history.

[_Authorities:_ Winsor, _From Cartier to Frontenac_; Gelcich, in
_Mittheilungen_ of Geographical Society of Vienna, 1892.]




CHAPTER X

AUSTRALIA AND THE SOUTH SEAS--TASMAN AND COOK

If one looks at the west coast of Australia one is struck by the
large number of Dutch names which are jotted down the coast. There
is Hoog Island, Diemen's Bay, Houtman's Abrolhos, De Wit land, and
the Archipelago of Nuyts, besides Dirk Hartog's Island and Cape
Leeuwin. To the extreme north we find the Gulf of Carpentaria,
and to the extreme south the island which used to be called Van
Diemen's Land. It is not altogether to be wondered at that almost
to the middle of this century the land we now call Australia was
tolerably well known as New Holland. If the Dutch had struck the
more fertile eastern shores of the Australian continent, it might
have been called with reason New Holland to the present day; but
there is scarcely any long coast-line of the world so inhospitable
and so little promising as that of Western Australia, and one can
easily understand how the Dutch, though they explored it, did not
care to take possession of it.

[Illustration: TERRES AUSTRALES. d'apres d'Anville. 1746.]

But though the Dutch were the first to explore any considerable
stretch of Australian coast, they were by no means the first to
sight it. As early as 1542 a Spanish expedition under Luis Lopez de
Villalobos, was despatched to follow up the discoveries of Magellan
in the Pacific Ocean within the Spanish sphere of influence. He
discovered several of the islands of Polynesia, and attempted to
seize the Philippines, but his fleet had to return to New Spain.
One of the ships coasted along an island to which was given the
name of New Guinea, and was thought to be part of the great unknown
southern land which Ptolemy had imagined to exist in the south
of the Indian Ocean, and to be connected in some way with Tierra
del Fuego. Curiosity was thus aroused, and in 1606 Pedro de Quiros
was despatched on a voyage to the South Seas with three ships.
He discovered the New Hebrides, and believed it formed part of
the southern continent, and he therefore named it Australia del
Espiritu Santo, and hastened home to obtain the viceroyalty of
this new possession. One of his ships got separated from him, and
the commander, Luys Vaz de Torres, sailed farther to the south-west,
and thereby learned that the New Australia was not a continent but
an island. He proceeded farther till he came to New Guinea, which
he coasted along the south coast, and seeing land to the south of
him, he thus passed through the straits since named after him, and
was probably the first European to see the continent of Australia.
In the very same year (1606) the Dutch yacht named the _Duyfken_ is
said to have coasted along the south and west coasts of New Guinea
nearly a thousand miles, till they reached Cape Keerweer, or "turn
again." This was probably the north-west coast of Australia. In the
first thirty years of the seventeenth century the Dutch followed
the west coast of Australia with as much industry as the Portuguese
had done with the west coast of Africa, leaving up to the present
day signs of their explorations in the names of islands, bays,
and capes. Dirk Hartog, in the _Endraaght_, discovered that Land
which is named after his ship, and the cape and roadstead named
after himself, in 1616. Jan Edels left his name upon the western
coast in 1619; while, three years later, a ship named the _Lioness_
or _Leeuwin_ reached the most western point of the continent, to
which its name is still attached. Five years later, in 1627, De
Nuyts coasted round the south coast of Australia; while in the
same year a Dutch commander named Carpenter discovered and gave
his name to the immense indentation still known as the Gulf of
Carpentaria.

But still more important discoveries were made in 1642 by an expedition
sent out from Batavia under ABEL JANSSEN TASMAN to investigate
the real extent of the southern land. After the voyages of the
_Leeuwin_ and De Nuyts it was seen that the southern coast of the
new land trended to the east, instead of working round to the west,
as would have been the case if Ptolemy's views had been correct.
Tasman's problem was to discover whether it was connected with the
great southern land assumed to lie to the south of South America.
Tasman first sailed from Mauritius, and then directing his course
to the south-east, going much more south than Cape Leeuwin, at
last reached land in latitude 43.30 deg. and longitude 163.50 deg.. This
he called Van Diemen's Land, after the name of the Governor-General
of Batavia, and it was assumed that this joined on to the land
already discovered by De Nuyts. Sailing farther to the eastward,
Tasman came out into the open sea again, and thus appeared to prove
that the newly discovered land was not connected with the great
unknown continent round the south pole.

But he soon came across land which might possibly answer to that
description, and he called it Staaten Land, in honour of the
States-General of the Netherlands. This was undoubtedly some part
of New Zealand. Still steering eastward, but with a more northerly
trend, Tasman discovered several islands in the Pacific, and ultimately
reached Batavia after touching on New Guinea. His discoveries were
a great advance on previous knowledge; he had at any rate reduced
the possible dimensions of the unknown continent of the south within
narrow limits, and his discoveries were justly inscribed upon the map
of the world cut in stone upon the new Staathaus in Amsterdam, in
which the name New Holland was given by order of the States-General
to the western part of the "terra Australis." When England for a
time became joined on to Holland under the rule of William III.,
William Dampier was despatched to New Holland to make further
discoveries. He retraced the explorations of the Dutch from Dirk
Hartog's Bay to New Guinea, and appears to have been the first
European to have noticed the habits of the kangaroo; otherwise
his voyage did not add much to geographical knowledge, though when
he left the coasts of New Guinea he steered between New England
and New Ireland.

As a result of these Dutch voyages the existence of a great land
somewhere to the south-east of Asia became common property to all
civilised men. As an instance of this familiarity many years before
Cook's epoch-making voyages, it may be mentioned that in 1699 Captain
Lemuel Gulliver (in Swift's celebrated romance) arrived at the kingdom
of Lilliput by steering north-west from Van Diemen's Land, which he
mentions by name. Lilliput, it would thus appear, was situated
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the great Bight of Australia. This
curious mixture of definite knowledge and vague ignorance on the
part of Swift exactly corresponds to the state of geographical
knowledge about Australia in his days, as is shown in the preceding
map of those parts of the world, as given by the great French
cartographer D'Anville in 1745 (p. 157).

These discoveries of the Spanish and Dutch were direct results
and corollaries of the great search for the Spice Islands, which
has formed the main subject of our inquiries. The discoveries were
mostly made by ships fitted out in the Malay archipelago, if not
from the Spice Islands themselves. But at the beginning of the
eighteenth century new motives came into play in the search for
new lands; by that time almost the whole coast-line of the world
was roughly known. The Portuguese had coasted Africa, the Spanish
South America, the English most of the east of North America, while
Central America was known through the Spaniards. Many of the islands
of the Pacific Ocean had been touched upon, though not accurately
surveyed, and there remained only the north-west coast of America
and the north-east coast of Asia to be explored, while the great
remaining problem of geography was to discover if the great southern
continent assumed by Ptolemy existed, and, if so, what were its
dimensions. It happened that all these problems of coastline geography,
if we may so call it, were destined to be solved by one man, an
Englishman named JAMES COOK, who, with Prince Henry, Magellan, and
Tasman, may be said to have determined the limits of the habitable
land.

His voyages were made in the interests, not of trade or conquest,
but of scientific curiosity; and they were, appropriately enough,
begun in the interests of quite a different science than that of
geography. The English astronomer Halley had left as a sort of legacy
the task of examining the transit of Venus, which he predicted for
the year 1769, pointing out its paramount importance for determining
the distance of the sun from the earth. This transit could only
be observed in the southern hemisphere, and it was in order to
observe it that Cook made his first voyage of exploration.

There was a double suitability in the motive of Cook's first voyage.
The work of his life could only have been carried out owing to the
improvement in nautical instruments which had been made during
the early part of the eighteenth century. Hadley had invented the
sextant, by which the sun's elevation could be taken with much
more ease and accuracy than with the old cross-staff, the very
rough gnomon which the earlier navigators had to use. Still more
important for scientific geography was the improvement that had
taken place in accurate chronometry. To find the latitude of a
place is not so difficult--the length of the day at different times
of the year will by itself be almost enough to determine this, as
we have seen in the very earliest history of Greek geography--but
to determine the longitude was a much more difficult task, which
in the earlier stages could only be formed by guesswork and dead
reckonings.

But when clocks had been brought to such a pitch of accuracy that
they would not lose but a few seconds or minutes during the whole
voyage, they could be used to determine the difference of local
time between any spot on the earth's surface and that of the port
from which the ship sailed, or from some fixed place where the clock
could be timed. The English government, seeing the importance of
this, proposed the very large reward of L10,000 for the invention
of a chronometer which would not lose more than a stated number of
minutes during a year. This prize was won by John Harrison, and
from this time onward a sea-captain with a minimum of astronomical
knowledge was enabled to know his longitude within a few minutes.
Hadley's sextant and Harrison's chronometer were the necessary
implements to enable James Cook to do his work, which was thus,
both in aim and method, in every way English.

James Cook was a practical sailor, who had shown considerable
intelligence in sounding the St. Lawrence on Wolfe's expedition,
and had afterwards been appointed marine surveyor of Newfoundland.
When the Royal Society determined to send out an expedition to
observe the transit of Venus, according to Halley's prediction,
they were deterred from entrusting the expedition to a scientific
man by the example of Halley himself, who had failed to obtain
obedience from sailors on being entrusted with the command. Dalrymple,
the chief hydrographer of the Admiralty, who had chief claims to
the command, was also somewhat of a faddist, and Cook was selected
almost as a _dernier ressort_. The choice proved an excellent one.
He selected a coasting coaler named the _Endeavour_, of 360 tons,
because her breadth of beam would enable her to carry more stores
and to run near coasts. Just before they started Captain Wallis
returned from a voyage round the world upon which he had discovered
or re-discovered Tahiti, and he recommended this as a suitable
place for observing the transit.

Cook duly arrived there, and on the 3rd of June 1769 the main object
of the expedition was fulfilled by a successful observation. But
he then proceeded farther, and arrived soon at a land which he
saw reason to identify with the Staaten Land of Tasman; but on
coasting along this, Cook found that, so far from belonging to a
great southern continent, it was composed of two islands, between
which he sailed, giving his name to the strait separating them.
Leaving New Zealand on the 31st of March 1770, on the 20th of the
next month he came across another land to the westward, hitherto
unknown to mariners. Entering an inlet, he explored the neighbourhood
with the aid of Mr. Joseph Banks, the naturalist of the expedition.
He found so many plants new to him, that the bay was termed Botany
Bay.

He then coasted northward, and nearly lost his ship upon the great
reef running down the eastern coast; but by keeping within it he
managed to reach the extreme end of the land in this direction,
and proved that it was distinct from New Guinea. In other words,
he had reached the southern point of the strait named after Torres.
To this immense line of coast Cook gave the name of New South Wales,
from some resemblance that he saw to the coast about Swansea. By this
first voyage Cook had proved that neither New Holland nor Staaten
Land belonged to the great Antarctic continent, which remained
the sole myth bequeathed by the ancients which had not yet been
definitely removed from the maps. In his second voyage, starting
in 1772, he was directed to settle finally this problem. He went
at once to the Cape of Good Hope, and from there started out on
a zigzag journey round the Southern Pole, poking the nose of his
vessel in all directions as far south as he could reach, only pulling
up when he touched ice. In whatever direction he advanced he failed
to find any trace of extensive land corresponding to the supposed
Antarctic continent, which he thus definitely proved to be non-existent.
He spent the remainder of this voyage in rediscovering various
sets of archipelagos which preceding Spanish, Dutch, and English
navigators had touched, but had never accurately surveyed. Later
on Cook made a run across the Pacific from New Zealand to Cape
Horn without discovering any extensive land, thus clinching the
matter after three years' careful inquiry. It is worthy of remark
that during that long time he lost but four out of 118 men, and
only one of them by sickness.

Only one great problem to maritime geography still remained to be
solved, that of the north-west passage, which, as we have seen,
had so frequently been tried by English navigators, working from
the east through Hudson's Bay. In 1776 Cook was deputed by George
III. to attempt the solution of this problem by a new method. He
was directed to endeavour to find an opening on the north-west
coast of America which would lead into Hudson's Bay. The old legend
of Juan de Fuca's great bay still misled geographers as to this
coast. Cook not alone settled this problem, but, by advancing through
Behring Strait and examining both sides of it, determined that
the two continents of Asia and America approached one another as
near as thirty-six miles. On his return voyage he landed at Owhyee
(Hawaii), where he was slain in 1777, and his ships returned to
England without adding anything further to geographical knowledge.

Cook's voyages had aroused the generous emulation of the French,
who, to their eternal honour, had given directions to their fleet
to respect his vessels wherever found, though France was at that
time at war with England. In 1783 an expedition was sent, under
Francois de la Perouse, to complete Cook's work. He explored the
north-east coast of Asia, examined the island of Saghalien, and
passed through the strait between it and Japan, often called by
his name. In Kamtschatka La Perouse landed Monsieur Lesseps, who
had accompanied the expedition as Russian interpreter, and sent home
by him his journals and surveys. Lesseps made a careful examination
of Kamtschatka himself, and succeeded in passing overland thence
to Paris, being the first European to journey completely across
the Old World from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. La Perouse
then proceeded to follow Cook by examining the coast of New South
Wales, and to his surprise, when entering a fine harbour in the
middle of the coast, found there English ships engaged in settling
the first Australian colony in 1787. After again delivering his
surveys to be forwarded by the Englishmen, he started to survey
the coast of New Holland, but his expedition was never heard of
afterwards. As late as 1826 it was discovered that they had been
wrecked on Vanikoro, an island near the Fijis.

We have seen that Cook's exploration of the eastern coast of Australia
was soon followed up by a settlement. A number of convicts were
sent out under Captain Philips to Botany Bay, and from that time
onward English explorers gradually determined with accuracy both
the coast-line and the interior of the huge stretch of land known
to us as Australia. One of the ships that had accompanied Cook on
his second voyage had made a rough survey of Van Diemen's Land,
and had come to the conclusion that it joined on to the mainland.
But in 1797, Bass, a surgeon in the navy, coasted down from Port
Jackson to the south in a fine whale boat with a crew of six men,
and discovered open sea running between the southernmost point and
Van Diemen's Land; this is still known as Bass' Strait. A companion
of his, named Flinders, coasted, in 1799, along the south coast from
Cape Leeuwin eastward, and on this voyage met a French ship at
Encounter Bay, so named from the _rencontre_. Proceeding farther,
he discovered Port Philip; and the coast-line of Australia was
approximately settled after Captain P. P. King in four voyages,
between 1817 and 1822, had investigated the river mouths.

[Illustration: THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.]

The interior now remained to be investigated. On the east coast
this was rendered difficult by the range of the Blue Mountains,
honeycombed throughout with huge gullies, which led investigators
time after time into a cul-de-sac; but in 1813 Philip Wentworth
managed to cross them, and found a fertile plateau to the westward.
Next year Evans discovered the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers, and
penetrated farther into the Bathurst plains. In 1828-29 Captain
Sturt increased the knowledge of the interior by tracing the course
of the two great rivers Darling and Murray. In 1848 the German
explorer Leichhardt lost his life in an attempt to penetrate the
interior northward; but in 1860 two explorers, named Burke and Wills,
managed to pass from south to north along the east coast; while, in
the four years 1858 to 1862, John M'Dowall Stuart performed the
still more difficult feat of crossing the centre of the continent
from south to north, in order to trace a course for the telegraphic
line which was shortly afterwards erected. By this time settlements
had sprung up throughout the whole coast of Eastern Australia,
and there only remained the western desert to be explored. This
was effected in two journeys of John Forrest, between 1868 and
1874, who penetrated from Western Australia as far as the central