Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/59

 Rh this century, and attracting the attention of the celebrated geographer M. Barbié du Bocage, drew from him the following notice in the Magasin Encyclopédique, douzième année, tom. iv, 1807, which, though lengthy, bears so directly upon the subject of the present work, that it is here given in full.

manuscript is an hydrographic atlas, drawn at Dieppe in 1547, by a person of the name of Nicholas Vallard, of Dieppe, representing the eastern and western coasts of the continent of New Holland. This atlas is not the only one upon which these coasts are laid down. There are two in England, which came from France, and which we have been made acquainted with by the English as well as by some Frenchmen. One of the two, which has been for a considerable time in the library of the British Museum, was drawn in 1542 by a person of the name of Jean Rotz or Roty, who had in the first instance drawn it, as he states in the dedication, for the king of France, but afterwards presented it to Henry VIII, king of England. The second is a large map on one single sheet of parchment, made for the Dauphin of France, whose arms it bears. It was formerly in the library of the earl of Oxford, Where Sir Joseph Banks was acquainted with it, and thence it passed to the British Museum, where it is at present. The English pretend that none of these charts were discovered till after the death of the celebrated Captain Cook, and that they had no knowledge of them when this navigator set sail. But their prior existence in well-known libraries in England may cause this assertion