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Let us then call the bright and quenchless planispheres, which such lives describe and fill around them, biographs, assuming that the script is in rays of light. As differ the stars above in glory, so these differ in the qualities of their illumination. The brightest of them, to mere human seeming, are those which shine with the sheer brilliancy of intellect and genius.
They stand alone, therefore, as the most important documents hitherto come to light bearing on the early discovery and mapping of Australia. They belong to a type of manuscript Lusitano-French, or Lusitano-Spanish planispheres, which is represented by several specimens, all of which are copies from a prototype which has either been destroyed or has not yet been found.
The atlas was a magnificent work, comprising maps of every country in the world, and several planispheres arranged upon Mercator's projection, and of which the nomenclature was in French but which also bore neither date nor name of publisher.
Paganel had persisted in making it the root of the verb ABORDER, and it turned out to be a proper name, the French name of the Isle Tabor, the isle which had been a refuge for the shipwrecked sailors of the BRITANNIA. It was difficult to avoid falling into the error, however, for on the English planispheres on the DUNCAN, the little isle was marked Maria Theresa.
In this short chapter, before leaving the subject of the old manuscript maps of Australia, and devoting the remaining pages of my book to actual voyages of discovery, I shall refer once more to the importance of the Lusitano-Spanish planispheres of the Dieppese school of cartography* because most of those documents, becoming the property of French map-makers, were used in various endeavours which were made to induce European sovereigns to colonize the Great South Land.
Schiaparelli has extended the investigation to all the stars visible to the naked eye. He laid down on planispheres the number of such stars in each region of the heavens of 5 degrees square. Each region was then shaded with a tint that was darker as the region was richer in stars.
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