Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia:: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.Major, Richard Henry
History
Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia:: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.
Major, Richard Henry
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Discoveries in geography -- Portuguese; Voyages and travels
That this description does not apply to Australia the reader of the
present day may readily conclude. It has received its explanation in the
judicious notes of Marsden, who shows how, from the circumstances, it is
highly probablye that Lochac is intended for some part of the country of
Cambodia, the capital of which was named Loech, according to the
authority of Gaspar de Cruz, who visited it during the reign of
Sebastian, king of Portugal. See Purchas, vol. iii, p. 169. The country
of Cambodia, moreover, produces the gold, the spices, and the elephants
which Marco Polo attributes to Lochac. Pentam is reasonably supposed by
Marsden to be Bintam, and the island and kingdom of Malaiur (Maletur, in
the Basle edition of 1532, included in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus) to be
the kingdom of the Malays.
In the early _engraved_ maps of the sixteenth century, however, we see
the effects of this description exhibited in a form calculated to
startle the inquirer respecting the early indications of Australia. On
these maps we find laid down an extensive development of the great Terra
Australis Incognita trending northward to New Guinea; with which, on
some of these maps, it is made to be continuous, while on others it is
divided from it; and on the northernmost portion of this remarkably
delineated land occur the legends: “Beach provincia aurifera.” “Lucach
regnum.” “Maletur regnum scatens aromatibus.” “Vastissimas hic esse
regiones ex M. Pauli Veneti et Ludovici Vartomanni scriptis
peregrinationibus liquido constat.”
We have already explained from Marsden’s notes the reasonable rendering
of the name of Lucach or Lochac. The name of Beach, or rather Boeach, is
another form of the same name, which crept into the Basle edition of
Marco Polo of 1532, and was blunderingly repeated by the cartographers;
while for Maletur we have the suggestion of the Burgomaster Witsen, in
his _Noord en Oost Tartarye_, fol. 169, that it is taken from Maleto, on
the north side of the island of Timor, a suggestion rendered null by the
fact, apparently unknown to Witsen, that Maletur, as already stated, was
but a misspelling in the Basle edition for Malaiur. The sea in which, on
these early maps, this remarkable land is made to lie, is called Mare
Lantchidol, another perplexing piece of misspelling upon which all the
cartographers have likewise stumbled, and which finds its explanation in
the Malay words Laut Kìdol, or Chìdol, “_the South Sea_.” As, however,
this striking protrusion to the northward of a portion of the Great
Terra Australis Incognita on the early maps in a position so nearly
corresponding with that of Australia, may not have emanated solely from
the description of Marco Polo, the editor proposes to defer further
allusion to these maps until they present themselves in their due
chronological order among the documents and data of which he will have
to speak.
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