Timor.*

[* A contemporaneous Spanish pilot named Juan Gaetan, of whom we have
already heard in connection with the Spanish voyages on the north coast
of New Guinea [see pages 25, 26, 28], and who aboard Portuguese ships
navigated all the seas to the north of Australia, has put the following
remarks on record with reference to Portuguese charts.

He says: "I saw and knew all their charts. They were all cunningly
falsified, with longitudes and latitudes distorted, and land-features
drawn in at places and stretched out at others to suit their purposes,
etc., etc., and when they found out that I understood their little pranks
they made strenuous efforts to get me to enlist in their service, and
made me advantageous offers, which, however, I scorned to accept."--In
_Ramusio_.]

They could not have believed that Timor was situated to the east of the
peninsula, now known as York Peninsula, and clearly shown in these
charts, nor that there was not an open sea to the south of Java since the
first circumnavigators, returning to Spain from Timor, with the last ship
of Magellan's fleet, sailed through it. (See track of their ship on map
of Timor, p. 40.)

But the secret was so well kept, that seventy-eight years after
Magellan's voyage round the world, Java and Australia were still believed
to be one and the same continent by certain otherwise well-informed
navigators, as will be seen by Linschoten's "Discours of Voyages into ye
East and West Indies," published in London, in the year 1598, in which
the following description, from Portuguese sources, occurs: