"Where there is gold."-Gen., 2nd chap., 11th ver.

THE Great South Land, Austral Asia, Terra Australia, New South Wales, New Holland, by all these names has the continent to which this chapter refers been designated.

The magnificent discoveries of the continents of America in that expansive period of human intelligence and action, the 15th and 16th centuries, induced a dreamy impression that some counterbalancing land would be found in the opposite quarter of the globe; and the realization of this geographical speculation was attempted by the Spaniards, who started on the expedition from their far-west colony in Peru, and also by the Dutch from their eastern settlement in Java.

In 1605, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Luis Vaez de Torres sailed from Peru to search for this Austral Land which loomed up to their imagination in the distant western horizon, and they discovered several of the islands now included in the New Hebrides