forget their chief purpose, the decorative. But, allowing for the liberty
usually granted to the artist, nay, often exacted by him, the scenes
depicted are not borrowed from the realms of "Idealism" to the extent
that has been supposed by certain commentators.

The kangaroo is not represented; no, nor the gum-tree either, perhaps!
But that clump of bamboos* on the top of a hill is not a volcano in full
eruption, as a learned critic once ventured to assert.

[* Bamboos are plentiful on the north-western coasts of Australia,
planted, no doubt, by Malay fishermen in search of trepang, who from time
immemorial frequented those shores.]

We see, on these charts, fairly correct presentments of that animal seen
for the first time by the Spaniards in the straits to which Magellan gave
his name, and described by the Italian narrator, Pigafetta, who
accompanied the first circumnavigators.

Pigafetta says:--
"This animal has the head and ears of a mule, the body of a camel, the
legs of a stag, and the tail of a horse, and like this animal it neighs."

The animal thus described by Pigafetta is the Guanaco, _Camelus
huanacus_, and it is not astonishing to find it represented on the
Australian continent, for we know* that this continent was supposed to be
connected with _Tierra del Fuego_ and was sometimes called _Magellanica_,
in consequence. In the chart that I am describing, Australia is called
Jave-la-Grande--La Grande Jave would have been the proper French
construction; but the term Jave-la-Grande is merely the translation of
Java Maior, the Portuguese for Marco Polo's Java Major.