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| This catalogue of books and maps tells the story of the push towards the fabled Southern Continent, with speculations and discoveries by the major exploring nations - the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and English. It makes a splendid roll-call: Marco Polo, Mandeville, Varthema, the first Dutch trading fleets chronicled by Lodewijcksz and Spilbergen, Jansz and the Duyfken, Quiros, Mendaña and Torres; Schouten and Le Maire showing another way across the Pacific; Tasman; Pelsaert's Batavia and the first noteworthy - and hair-raising - events in west Australia; King Manuel and Pope Leo X, Drake's great voyage, and finally William Dampier, the first English landing on the Australian continent at the cusp of the eighteenth century.
As this catalogue shows, these early voyages have a fascinating pre-history which stretches back to the classical geographers, whose works became some of the most important early printed books in the late 1400s and 1500s. Gradually early imaginings became replaced by the belief that a vast Southern Continent could contain riches and exotica. When Quirós thought he had found it he grandly named it Austrialia del Spiritu Santo.
Australian: $55 (Approx. US $57, Euro €44) |
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