We may safely say that the information concerning the Far East at the
disposal of those Dutchmen who set sail for India in 1595, was
exclusively based on what their countryman JAN HUYGEN VAN LINSCHOTEN, had
told them in his famous _Itinerario_. And as regards the present
Australia this information amounted to little or nothing.

Unacquainted as he was with the fact that the south-coast of Java had
already been circumnavigated by European navigators, VAN LINSCHOTEN did
not venture decidedly to assert the insular nature of this island. It
might be connected with the mysterious South-land, the Terra Australis,
the Terra Incognita, whose fantastically shaped coast-line was reported
to extend south of America, Africa and Asia, in fact to the southward of
the whole then known world. This South-land was a mysterious region, no
doubt, but this did not prevent its coast-lines from being studded with
names equally mysterious: the charts of it showed the names of Beach [*],
the gold-bearing land (provincia aurifera), of Lucach, of Maletur, a
region overflowing with spices (scatens aromatibus). Forming one whole
with it, figured Nova Guinea, encircled by a belt of islands.

[* That the Dutch identified Beach with the South-land discovered by them
in 1616, is proved by No. XI A of the Documents (p. 14).]

{Page v}

So far the information furnished by VAN LINSCHOTEN [*]. At the same time,
however, there were in the Netherlands persons who had other data to go
by. In 1597 CORNELIS WIJTFLIET of Louvain brought out his _Descriptionis
Plolomaicae augmentum_, which among the rest contained a chart on which
not only Java figured as an island, but which also represented New Guinea