The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea

ge manuscript planisphere, draughted and illuminated by Pierre Desceliers, a priest of Argues

n cartouches spread here and there between the illuminations. These, however, do not refer to Australia

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stralia are those not alluded to in the French text, a fact which

huts on the western coast, which may have been inspired by some freak of nature as seen by Dampier on the same coast some hundred and thirty odd years after these charts were painted. Dampier says: "There we

e huge dome-shaped ant-hills seen on this coast, and Captain Pelsart, wrecked in 1629, also describes some an

y of Rest, took occasion to measure one of these gigantic ant-hills of th

pointed; and having no time to observe the country it gave them no great hopes of better success, even if they had travelled further wit

f the western coast of Australia. He says: "Here are a great many rocks in the large savannah we were in, which are five or six feet high and round at the top like a haycock,