Abstract
BEFORE us lies one of the earliest published maps in which New Guinea is laid down. It belongs to Huygen van Linschoten's book of East Indian voyages, and was published in the year 1595, being derived largely from Portuguese sources. The map is turned on one side as compared with our present ones, so that at the top, on one hand, appears Japan, strangely shaped, and with the names of the cities curiously spelled, Meacum (the capital, Miaco, Kioto) and Tochis (Tokio?): whilst on the other hand lies New Guinea. At the foot of the map are Sumatra and the Bay of Bengal, and on the left hand China stands prominently upwards from the base of the map, with a camelopard walking; about in its midst, regardless of the rules of geographical distribution. The north point lies to the left hand of the map, and the south to the right. New Guinea is represented as a very large and elongate island, the south coast being drawn without definite outline as unexplored, but with the Aru Islands duly shown lying off it. The great island is marked “Os Papvas,” and at its eastern corner is the inscription “Hic hibernavit Georgius de Menezes.” Although Antonio d'Abreu and Francisco Serraõ possibly sighted the New Guinea coast in 1511, Dom Jorge de Menezes must be regarded as the actual discoverer of the island. He was driven by the prevailing monsoon out of his course far to the eastward, when attempting to reach the Moluccas, from Malacca, by a new route round the north of Borneo in August, 1526. Having thus reached an island lying off the coast of Papua, he had to “winter” there, that is to say, to wait for the periodical change of the monsoon. According to Oscar Peschel, the island at which he remained, and which was called Versija, was very possibly one of those lying off Geelvink Bay. It is remarkable how very slowly our knowledge concerning New Guinea grew through the explorations of successive voyagers, since the time of Menezes until within the period of the last ten years, and even now it is quite startling to pick up a small octavo volume and find it jauntily entitled “A Few Months in New Guinea,” as if New Guinea were as familiar and accessible a place as say Iceland or Norway, about which such little books are commonly written by enthusiastic tourists.
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New Guinea 1 . Nature 21, 64–66 (1879). https://doi.org/10.1038/021064a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021064a0