Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/81

 Rh the north-east coast line on the early maps. Let a line be drawn from the southernmost point of the Gulf of Carpentaria to Halifax Bay, and the form of outline we refer to is detected immediately. Nor is this conjecture without corroboration from the physical features of the country. On the ancient map we find several rivers laid down along the northeast coast. If we examine the corresponding coast in the Gulf of Carpentaria, those rivers are seen to exist; whereas from Cape York all along the coast of Australia to the twenty-second or twenty-third degree, there is not even an indication of a river emptying itself into the sea. The great number of islands and reefs laid down along the north-east coast of the early maps coincides with the Great Barrier reefs, and with the Cumberland and Northumberland islands, and a host of others which skirt this part of the shores of Australia. "Coste dangereuse," "Bay perdue," and "R. de beaucoup d'Isles," are names which we readily concede to be appropriate to portions of such a coast. The name of "Coste des Herbaiges," of which we have already spoken as having been erroneously supposed by many geographers to apply to Botany Bay, was probably given to that part of the coast where the first symptoms of fertility were observed in passing southward, the more northern portions of the shore being for the most part dry and barren. That it is an error to connect the name with Botany Bay has already been shown, at p. xxxiv, and the editor must not fail to state that the unanswerable reason there adduced was