WHO FOUND AUSTRALIA?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 228, 20 January 1911, Page 5

WHO FOUND AUSTRALIA?

A PROFESSOR'S RESEARCHES. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. Sydney, January 19. Mr. E. Pctherick, of the Federal Government Library, claims to have secured proof, after forty years' researches, that Australia was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci in 1499. The proof rests on the result of a find made by a university professor at Cracow, Poland. The discovery is in the shape of a little globe of the date 1510, forming the ornamentation of a clock, which had been hidden for fourteen hundred years, showing the outline of land south of India. Professor Entreiehcr, discoverer of the globe, published a long paper in support of Vespucci's discovery. Mr. Petherick, by documentary and other evidence, supports this claim as a step towards the solution, if it does not fully solve, perhaps the greatest enigma of modern geographical discovery.

Amcricus Vcspnehis, properly Americo Vespucci, was an Italian mariner. He was born on March 9, 14.i1, at Florence. He was educated under the care of his uncle, the friar Gcorgio Antonio Vespucci, and embraced a mercantile life. We find him in Spain in 148(1 cngased in trade; and he was at the head of a large Florentine firm in 14(H), when Columbus was making preparations for his second vovage. Tn MO!) he. took part in the expedition of Ojeda to Surinam, from which he returned in the next year to Spain. After this he entered the service of King Emanuel of Portugal, and made two voyages in Portuguese ships to America, the first in 1501-2, the second in 1:503-4, he having the command of the. latter expedition, with which he examined a part of the coast of Brazil. In 1'50."> he entered the service of the Kins of Spain, but made no more voyages', his duties being to prepare charts and prescribe routes to the New World, which -soon received his name. This honor certainly belonged to Columbus, for the prior 'discovery of America by him is not questioned. Vespucci, however, had nothing to do with the accident or .error by which his name was given to America. The name* Americi Terra was applied to that continent in 1507 by Martin Waldseemuller, a geographer of Freiburg in Breisgau, in a work entitled Cosmographiae Introductio. Vespucci died in Seville in -1510.

Australia appears to have been first d : s ( -overed by French navigators in the first half of'the sixteenth century, as it is laid down on some French maps (and on French maps only) as early as 1">42, under the name of .lave In Grande. The first authenticated discovery is known to have been made in HHII by a Portuguese named Manoel Godinho de Eredia. At one time IfiOfi was the date assigned to this event, the credit of which was given by some to the Dutch, by others to the Spaniards, but the true date and discoverer, says one writer, were pointed out in 1861 by Mr. Major, of the British Mmseum, who' also called attention to the maps above-mentioned. In 1000 Torres, a Spaniard, passed through the strait u.at now bears his name, between Papua and Australia. Between this period and 14528 a large portion of the Australian coast-line was surveyed by various Dutch navigators. It was not until 1770 that Cook "extended the exploration to the. east coast, and landed in Botany Bay.