From about the fourth quarter of the sixteenth century until the date of
Abel Tasman's voyages, 1642 to 1644, there was a period of vague
speculation about a supposed great southern continent. The maps of the
time indicate the total lack of accurate information at the disposal of
their compilers. There was no general agreement as to what this region
was like in its outlines, proportions, or situation. Some cartographers,
as Peter Plancius (1594) and Hondius (1595), trailed a wavy line across
the foot of their representations of the globe, inscribed Terra Australis
upon it, and by a fine stroke of invention gave an admirable aspect of
finish and symmetry to the form of the world. The London map of 1578,
issued with George Best's Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discoverie,
barricaded the south pole with a Terra Australis not unlike the design of
a switch-back railway. Molyneux' remarkable map, circa 1590, dropped the
vast imaginary continent, and displayed a small tongue of land in about
the region where the real Australia is; suggesting that some voyager had
been blown out of his course, had come upon a part of the western
division of the continent, and had jotted down a memorandum of its
appearance upon his chart. It looks like a sincere attempt to tell a bit
of the truth. But speaking generally, the Terra Australis of the old
cartographers was a gigantic antipodean imposture, a mere piece of
map-makers' furniture, put in to fill up the gaping space at the south
end of the globe.

A few minutes devoted to the study of a map of the Indian Ocean,
including the Cape of Good Hope and the west coast of
Australia--especially one indicating the course of currents--will show
how natural it was that Portuguese and Dutch ships engaged in the spice
trade should occasionally have found themselves in proximity to the real
Terra Australis. It will also explain more clearly than a page of type
could do, why the western and north-western coasts were known so early,