The honour of that first authenticated discovery, as hitherto accepted in history, I am now prepared to dispute. Within the last few days I have discovered a MS. Mappemonde in the British Museum, in which on the north-west corner of a country, which I shall presently show beyond all question to be Australia, occurs the following legend: “Nuca antara foi descuberta o anno 1601 por mano (_sic_) el godhino de Evedia (_sic_) por mandado de (_sic_) Vico Rey Aives (_sic_) de Saldaha,” (_sic_) which I scarcely need translate, “Nuca Antara was discovered in the year 1601, by Manoel Godinho de Eredia, by command of the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha.” The misfortune is that this map is only a copy, but I think I shall be able to answer from internal evidence any doubt that might be thrown upon the authenticity of the information which it contains. The original was made about 1620, after the discovery of Eendraght’s Land, on the west coast of Australia, by the Dutch in 1616, but before the discovery of the south coast by Pieter Nuyts in 1627. So far from its author suspecting the existence of a south coast, he continues the old error which had obtained throughout the sixteenth century, of representing the Terra Australis as one vast continent, of which the parts that had been really discovered were made to protrude to the north as far as the parallel in which these discoveries respectively lay. Thus in this map we have Australia, as already described, on the right side of the map; and the _Island of Santa Cruz_ in the New Hebrides, there called Nova Jerusalem, discovered by Quiros, on the left side; but both connected and forming part of the one great Southern Continent. Now, it may be objected that this map, being only a copy made at the beginning of the present or close of the last century, the statement which forms the subject of the present paper may have been fraudulently inserted. But to give such a suggestion weight, a motive must be shown, the most reasonable one being that of assigning the honour of the first authenticated discovery to Portugal instead of to Holland. For this purpose we must suppose the falsifier to have been a Portuguese. To this I reply, that while all the writing of the map is in Portuguese, the copy was made by a person who was not only not a Portuguese himself, but who was ignorant of the Portuguese language. For example, the very legend in question, short as it is, contains no less than five blunders, all showing ignorance of the language: thus, the words “por Manoel” are written “por mano el,” “Eredia” is written “Evedia,” “do” is written “de,” “Ayres” is written “Aives,” “Saldanha” is written “Saldaha” without the circumflex to imply an abbreviation.