Pacific and Indian Oceans; and in contemplating this new extension of her possessions[1], I cannot avoid recalling to mind a curious and prophetic remark of Burton, who, in alluding to the discoveries of the Spanish navigator Ferdinando de Quires (Anne 1612), says—"I would know whether that hungry Spaniard's discovery of Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius Britannicus, or his of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet, in likelihood, it may be so; for without all question, it being extended from the tropick of Capricorn to the circle Antarctick, and lying as it doth in the temperate zone, cannot chuse but yeeld in time some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did unto the Spaniards[2]."—Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. II. Sect. ii. No. 3.
- ↑ The distance between Melville Island and Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land, the former being the most northern, and the latter the most southern, establishment under the government of New South Wales, is more than 2700 miles, and comprises an extent of coast nearly equal to that of the British possessions in India!
- ↑ Since the land that Quiros discovered and called Terra del Espiritu Santo was, at the time Burton wrote. considered to be the Eastern Coast of New Holland, I am justified in the use I have made of the above curious passage.
