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Updated: May 31, 2025
De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after the ships commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge.
This island to which Quiros gave the name of Sagittaria, is, according to Fleurieu, Tahiti, one of the principal of the group of Society Islands. On the succeeding days Quiros sighted several other islands, upon which he did not land, and to which he gave names taken from the Calendar, according to a practice which has changed all the native nomenclature of Oceania into a veritable litany.
His lieutenant, Luis Vaez de Torres, separated from him, discovered and passed the Torres Straits, a feat of excellent seamanship. Quiros returned to America. His high-flown descriptions of his discovery did not help him much, for the king simply ignored him, and his reports were buried in the archives.
I do not wonder that formerly the fact might be doubted, but at present I think there is sufficient reason to induce us to believe it, for Captain Dampier describes the country about Cape St. George and Port Mountague, which are within 9 degrees of the country described by De Quiros.
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.
Torres, with two ships, safely reached the sheltering bay, but the vessel in which De Quiros sailed was unable to enter it, and had to stand out to sea and weather the storm. The sailors then refused to proceed further with the voyage, and, having risen in mutiny, compelled De Quiros to turn the vessel's head for Mexico, which they reached after some terrible months of hunger and thirst.
Now De Quiros says the country he discovered was thickly inhabited by a people who were armed with bows and arrows, possessed vessels of earthenware, lived in houses of wood, roofed with palm leaves, were amply supplied with oranges, limes, pears, almonds larger than those of Spain, hogs, fowls, goats, capons, etc.
This last name was shortened by another discoverer Flinders to the present term Australia. The Duyfhen.# De Quiros and Torres were Spaniards, but the Dutch also displayed much anxiety to reach the great South Continent. From their colony at Java they sent out a small vessel, the Duyfhen, or Dove, which sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and passed half-way down along its eastern side.
The northern islands of this archipelago were first discovered by that great navigator Quiros in 1606; and, not without reason, were considered as part of the southern continent, which, at that time, and until very lately, was supposed to exist.
I had myself a strong desire to return by Cape Horn, because that would have enabled me finally to determine, whether there is or is not a southern continent; but against this it was a sufficient objection that we must have kept in a high southern latitude in the very depth of winter, with a vessel which was not thought sufficient for the undertaking: And the same reason was urged against our proceeding directly for the Cape of Good Hope, with still more force, because no discovery of moment could be hoped for in that route; it was therefore resolved that we should return by the East Indies, and that with this view we should, upon leaving the coast, steer westward, till we should fall in with the east coast of New Holland, and then follow the direction of that coast to the northward, till we should arrive at its northern extremity; but if that should be found impracticable, it was further resolved that we should endeavour to fall in with the land, or islands, said to have been discovered by Quiros.
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