But his admiral, Luis Vaez de Torres, suddenly abandoned by the ship which had de Quiros on board, was less certain about the actual discovery of this continent, so in 1606-7 he pursued a westward course and thus passed through that strait which separates northern Australia from New Guinea, and thence sailed to the Philippines. He was consequently the discoverer of what is now the British province of Papua, and of the important Torres Straits. For a long time the Spaniards kept these explorations as State secrets, for they were becoming very much alarmed at the progress in oversea exploration of the Dutch and English. The existence, therefore, of Torres Straits, separating the Australian Continent from the huge Island of New Guinea, remained practically unknown to the world of Europe until the voyages of Captain Cook, more than 150 years later. In fact, Cook, when he rediscovered and mapped the strait between North Australia and New Guinea, was not aware that he had been preceded in that direction by Torres. When, however, this fact was made clearly known through the archives of Spain, the name of the bold Spanish seaman was very appropriately (in 1796) given to a strait of water which is one of the most noteworthy passages from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans, and which may some day become of great importance in the world's history. CHAPTER IV Dutch Discoveries In the Malay Archipelago and the Spice Islands both Portuguese and Spanish were attacked by the Dutch, and gradually dispossessed from the end of the sixteenth century onwards. The Dutch had established themselves in the Moluccas in place of the Portuguese between 1604 and 1609, in which year the Portuguese were driven from the Nutmeg Islands of Banda. The Hollanders were followed almost immediately by the English. The merchant adventurers of both nations (who were seamen, soldiers, and pirates at will) soon penetrated to the western peninsulas of New Guinea and ousted the Portuguese from Java, Celebes, and southern Timor, but at first made little or no attempt to pass beyond Malaysia in search of the southern continent. By the conquest of Malacca in 1641 the Dutch had become practically masters of the Malay Archipelago, the Spaniards being confined to the possession of the Philippines (which they administered from the west coast of America across the Pacific),[44] and the Portuguese only lingering on in the islands of Timor and Flores, while the English had been expelled from the Spice Islands and Java, and merely retained a precarious foothold in Sumatra. Encouraged by these successes to seek for further lands that might be conquered, settled, or traded with, the Dutch began to take up the quest for the Terra Australis as soon as they were established as the masters of the Moluccas and Banda.