The generally received opinion of this and the other charts is, that Java (JAVE) is fairly well laid down, and that Great Java stands for the supposed South Land. Plausible as this theory reads, it is, however, open to objection. If it be accepted, and the narrow strait the river GRANDE be looked upon as that portion of the Indian Ocean dividing Java from the north-west coast of Australia, any resemblance to the present known shape of our continent is very hard to trace, unless after a most distorted fashion. If, however, we make the necessary allowances for the many errors that would creep in from one transcription to another, and look upon JAVE and JAVE LA GRANDE as one continent intersected by a mediterranean sea, we have a fair, if rude, conception of the north coast of Australia. Moreover, let the reader imagine a south coast line drawn from BAYE PERDUE on the east to HAVRE DE SYLLA on the west, doing away with the conjectural east and west coast continuations south of those points; the deep inlet between JAVE and JAVE LA GRANDE standing for the Gulf of Carpentaria, a very passable outline of the whole continent is obtained. And it is more than probable that this view was originally suggested by this map, and from it sprang the belief current, even to the beginning of this century, that an open passage existed from the west coast, either into the Gulf of Carpentaria, or to the head of Spencer's Gulf. The other maps give no more information than this one, and the identity of their origin is obvious. One, however, has been found in the British Museum the features of which are different. It is a rough copy of an old map showing the north west portion of a continent to the south of "Java Major." It bears a legend in Portugese, of which the following is a translation:--"Nuca Antara was discovered in the year 1601 by Manoel Godinho Eredia, by command of the Viceroy Ayres de Soldanha." This would point to a Portugese discovery of Australia immediately preceding the Dutch one. In Cornelius Wytfliet's "Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum," Louvain, 1598, the following passage is to be found:-- "The Australis Terra is the most southern of all lands; it is separated from New Guinea by a narrow strait; its shores are hitherto but little known, since, after one voyage and another, that route has been deserted, and seldom is the country visited unless when sailors are driven there by storms. The Australis Terra begins at two or three degrees from the equator, and is maintained by some to be of so great an extent that if it were thoroughly explored it would be regarded as a fifth part of the world."