six months at this land; after which the crew of the ship refused to proceed further, and Gonneville was obliged to return to France. When near home, he was attacked by an English corsair, and plundered of every thing; so that his journals and descriptions were entirely lost. On arriving in port, he made a declaration of all that had happened in the voyage to the Admiralty, which declaration was dated July the 19th, 1505, and was signed by the principal officers of the ship. In one part of the relation, this great southern land is said to be not far out of the direct route to the East Indies. The land of Gonneville has been supposed by some to be in a high southern latitude, and nearly on the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope; and Duval and Nolin placed it on their charts to the south-west from the Cape, in forty-eight degrees south. The President De Brosses, author of _Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes_, Paris, 1756, 2 vols. conjectured that it was south from the Moluccas, and that it was, in fact, the first discovery of the Terra Australis, since named New Holland. Gonneville, however, is represented as carrying on during his stay a friendly intercourse with the natives, whom he mentions as having made some advances in civilization. This account is quite incompatible with the character for treachery and barbarous cruelty, which we have received of the natives of North Australia from all the more recent voyagers. Let the whole account, says Burney, be reconsidered without prepossession, and the idea that will immediately and most naturally occur is, that the Southern India discovered by Gonneville was Madagascar. De Gonneville having doubled (passed round) the Cape, was by tempests driven into calm latitudes, and so near to this land, that he was directed thither by the flight of birds. The refusal of the crew to proceed to the Eastern India, would scarcely have happened if they had been so far advanced to the east as New Holland.