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With two ships and one light vessel, Quiros set out from Callao on the 21st December, 1605. At 3000 miles from Peru he had as yet discovered no land. In latitude 25 degrees south he observed a group of small islands belonging to the Dangerous archipelago. These were the Convercion de San Pablo, the Osnabrugh of Wallis, and Decena, so named because it was the tenth island seen.
They had also another object in view: in all the maps of the world of the sixteenth century, a great southern continent is laid down. In 1606, Quiros, a Spanish navigator, had searched in vain for this continent; and La Maire and Schouten, in their voyage, resolved to look for it, as well as for a new passage to India.
Our voyagers were now near the latitude assigned to the islands that were discovered by Quiros, and which, without sufficient reason, some geographers have thought proper to join to this land. The ship had the advantage of a fine breeze, and a clear moonlight night; and in standing off from six till near nine o'clock, she had deepened her water from fourteen to twenty-one fathom.
At six in the evening, the northermost land in sight bore N. by W. 1/2 W. and two low woody islands, which some of us took to be rocks above water, bore N. 1/2 W. At this time we shortened sail and hauled off shore E.N.E. and N.E. by E. close upon a wind; for it was my design to stretch off all night, as well to avoid the danger we saw a-head, as to see whether any islands lay in the offing, especially as we were now near the latitude assigned to the islands which were discovered by Quiros, and which some geographers, for what reason I know not, have thought fit to join to this land.
Some authors imagine that this was the New Hebrides group, and not Australia. I am not going to discuss the question, however. Count Quiros, Robert, and let us pass on to another." "ONE," said Robert. "In that same year, Louis Vas de Torres, the second in command of the fleet of Quiros, pushed further south. But it is to Theodore Hertoge, a Dutchman, that the honor of the great discovery belongs.
Accordingly, it was by his particular recommendation that a resolution was formed for the appointment of an expedition, finally to determine the question concerning the existence of a southern continent. Quiros seems to have been the first person, who had any idea that such a continent existed, and he was the first that was sent out for the sole purpose of ascertaining the fact.
Afterwards come Mendana, Torrès, and Quiros, upon whose deeds we shall pause a little, on account of the importance and authenticity of the discoveries which we owe to them. Alvaro Mendana de Neyra was nephew to the Governor of Lima, Don Pedro de Castro, who warmly advocated with the home government his nephew's project of searching for new countries in the Pacific Ocean.
None, that I know of, but this, that it must either be here or no where. Geographers have indeed laid down part of Quiros' discoveries in this Longitude, and have told us that he had these signs of a Continent, a part of which they have Actually laid down in the Maps; but by what Authority I know not.
This group properly belongs to Polynesia: of the other islands in this quarter of the globe, which were discovered prior to the eighteenth century, Otaheite is supposed to have been discovered by Quiros in 1606.
In the first place, then, it is most evident, from Captain Tasman's voyage, that New Guinea, Carpentaria, New Holland, Antony van Diemen's Land, and the countries discovered by De Quiros, make all one continent, from which New Zealand seems to be separated by a strait; and, perhaps, is part of another continent, answering to Africa, as this, of which we are now speaking, plainly does to America.
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