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.

[* See remark above.]

The great Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, described Java from hearsay as being the largest island in the world, and the Portuguese finding this to be incorrect, as far as their knowledge of Java proper was concerned, but finding nevertheless, this “largest island in the world” to the south-east of Java, in fact, approximately in the longitudes and latitudes described by Polo; the Portuguese, I say, did the best thing they could both for Marco Polo’s sake and their own, when they marked it on their charts where it was said to be, and with the name given to it by Polo, for he calls it Java Major to distinguish it from Sumatra, which island he named Java Minor.

The channel or river, marked between Java and Australia, is evidently a concession due to the fact that a passage was known to exist.  This channel, which is left white in the chart I am describing, is painted over in the specimen dated 1550 [see map pp. 68-69], as though it were blocked, and two men are represented with pick and shovel as in the act of cutting it open.

Curiously enough, in both maps, the upper silhouette of the landscape in this part defines the real south shore of Java.

On the continental part, the Australian Alps, the range of hills on the western and north-western coast, and the great sandy interior of Australia, are also roughly sketched in.  Was it all guess-work?

PLACE-NAMES.

It will not be necessary, I think, to give an elaborate description of the place-names that occur on this map; those who wish to know more about them may consult my larger work on “The Discovery of Australia.”

We need not dwell either on those that are inscribed along the northern shores of Java, well-known to the Portuguese twenty years at least before these maps were made.

The southern shores of Java are joined to Australia, or, at least, only separated from it by a fictitious river named Rio Grande, the Great River, which follows the sleek curve of the “pig’s back” described by D. do Couto, the Portuguese historian.