Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/31

 of Manilius, attributed to the first century, the form of the earth is thus described: "Pars ejus ad arctos Eminet, Austrinis pars est habitabilis oris, Sub pedibusque jacet nostris."

Many rumours may have been due to idle guesses, but some may have sprung from authentic information derived from voyagers in the Indian Seas, who doubtless visited the north coast of Australia, as the Malays visited it in later times.

Had any navigator in the sixteenth century by chance discovered the west coast it is improbable that direct results would have ensued. The Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English contended for posts of commerce, not for soil on which they might create new homes. For more than a century Malacca was prized by the Portuguese, and for a longer period by the Dutch, not as a sphere for colonization, but on account of the trade which it attracted and controlled.

A post of observation on the coast of Australia would have attracted no one, and would have commanded no trade. Yet the student of history will cast a thought upon the mysterious slumber which reigned over so vast and neglected a portion of the globe, while small but luxuriant spots were keenly contended for by Europeans, who were debarred from making in such uncongenial climates their permanent homes. Their ships and buildings were converted into hospitals, and the soil of their possessions into graves; while within easy reach, and even then visited by the seafaring Malay, was a land possessing an unsurpassed climate, with resources only now being unlocked, while four millions of Britons are gathered upon it. So little power have men's pretensions to determine the conditions of future wealth or greatness! The Pope and the Emperor allotted and claimed continents by what they called Divine right; while silently, but openly under their eyes, the race for whom Divine Providence had reserved the mastery was pitching its humble tents in the New World of America. Again in the South the same drama has been enacted. To