deliberately-planned, systematic, persistent exploration of any portion
of the Australian coast. The continent grew on the map of the world
gradually, slowly, almost accidentally. It emerged out of the unknown,
like some vast mythical monster heaving its large shoulders dank and
dripping from the unfathomed sea, and metamorphosed by a kiss from the
lips of knowledge into a being fair to look upon and rich in kindly
favours. It took two centuries and a half for civilised mankind to know
Australia, even in form, from the time when it was clearly understood
that there was such a country, until at length it was mapped, measured
and circumnavigated. Before this process began, there was a dialectical
stage, when it was hotly contested whether there could possibly be upon
the globe lands antipodean to Europe; and both earlier and later there
were conjectural stages when makers of maps, having no certain data, but
feeling sure that the blank southern hemisphere ought to be filled up
somehow, exercised a vagrant fancy and satisfied a long-felt want by
decorating their drawings with representations of a Terra Incognita
having not even a casual resemblance to the reality.

The process presents few points of resemblance to that by which the
discovery of America was accomplished. Almost as soon as Europe came into
touch with the western hemisphere, discovery was pursued with unflagging
energy, until its whole extent and contour were substantially known.
Within fifty years after Columbus led the way across the Atlantic (1492),
North and South America were laid down with something approaching
precision; and Gerard Mercator's map of 1541 presented the greater part
of the continent with the name fairly inscribed upon it. There were, it
is true, some errors and some gaps, especially on the west coast, which
left work for navigators to do. But the essential point is that in less
than half a century Europe had practically comprehended America as an
addition to the known world. There was but a brief twilight interval