CERVANTES' "DON QUIXOTE" REFORMS LITERATURE
A.D. 1605
HENRY EDWARD WATTS
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is the most celebrated of Spanish authors; but his fame rests upon a far more solid basis than merely that of having written the most readable and tender of humorous romances. He reformed literature. He tilted at windmills as truly as ever his hero did, and overthrew the false taste for wordy pomp and emptiness which was characteristic of his times. It was not only Spanish literature that felt the impulse of his warm, frank honesty and insight into life. All Europe was his debtor.Cervantes was an impoverished nobleman, that too common product of Spain in those days when her American gold fleets had begun to fail her. In his early manhood he was an author and then a soldier of fortune in Italy. He fought as a common soldier on one of the Genoese galleys in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, distinguished himself there by his heroism, and was three times wounded, crippled in one arm for life. Later he was captured by Algerian pirates, and was for five years a slave, ever planning and attempting escapes, a daring, dashing hero, the life and admiration of his fellow-captives.After his ransom and return to Spain, Cervantes once more took up literature, the amusement of his youth. He became a playwright and romancer. The government gave him a small position as a tax-collector, but with such good-natured carelessness did he handle this uncongenial employ that he had repeatedly to make good from his own pocket the losses he entailed upon the government. Even this unsatisfactory labor failed the impractical author about the period of the death of King Philip II (1598). He was imprisoned for debt, and sank into such abject poverty that he depended on his friends for bread. How much the gloomy Philip II is satirized in Cervantes' masterpiece has always been a disputed question.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is the most celebrated of Spanish authors; but his fame rests upon a far more solid basis than merely that of having written the most readable and tender of humorous romances. He reformed literature. He tilted at windmills as truly as ever his hero did, and overthrew the false taste for wordy pomp and emptiness which was characteristic of his times. It was not only Spanish literature that felt the impulse of his warm, frank honesty and insight into life. All Europe was his debtor.
Cervantes was an impoverished nobleman, that too common product of Spain in those days when her American gold fleets had begun to fail her. In his early manhood he was an author and then a soldier of fortune in Italy. He fought as a common soldier on one of the Genoese galleys in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, distinguished himself there by his heroism, and was three times wounded, crippled in one arm for life. Later he was captured by Algerian pirates, and was for five years a slave, ever planning and attempting escapes, a daring, dashing hero, the life and admiration of his fellow-captives.
After his ransom and return to Spain, Cervantes once more took up literature, the amusement of his youth. He became a playwright and romancer. The government gave him a small position as a tax-collector, but with such good-natured carelessness did he handle this uncongenial employ that he had repeatedly to make good from his own pocket the losses he entailed upon the government. Even this unsatisfactory labor failed the impractical author about the period of the death of King Philip II (1598). He was imprisoned for debt, and sank into such abject poverty that he depended on his friends for bread. How much the gloomy Philip II is satirized in Cervantes' masterpiece has always been a disputed question.
The accession of the new King, which had been hailed as "the light after darkness," had little effect on Cervantes' fortunes. Philip III, though he had some taste for letters, and was not without sprouts of kindliness in his heart, had been by education and by an over-strict regimen in youth debased, so that he was even more completely a slave to the priestly influence than his father had been, without any of his father's ability or force of character. The Duke of Lerma was "the Atlas who bore the burden of the monarchy."[1]He was a man, according to Quevedo, "alluring and dexterous rather than intelligent; ruled by the interested cunning of his own creatures but imperious with all others; magnificent, ostentatious; choosing his men only by considerations of his own special policy or from personal friendship." Under such a man, who ruled the King at his will, it was not likely that any portion of the royal benevolence should light on Miguel de Cervantes. Moreover, the crowd of suppliants at court was very great, their appetite stimulated doubtless by the flattering reports of the new King's liberal disposition.
A contemporary writer laments with pathetic zeal and pious indignation the lot of many famous captains and valiant soldiers, who, after serving the King all their lives and being riddled with wounds, were not only pushed aside into corners without any reward, but condemned to see unworthy men without merit loaded with benefits, merely through enjoying the favor of some minister or courtier.[2]The Duke of Lerma, as one who professed a contempt for all letters and learning, was even less likely to be influenced by Cervantes' literary merits than by his services as a soldier—services which had now become an old story. Disappointed in his hopes of preferment, Cervantes had to maintain himself and his family by the exercise of his pen—writing, as we learn, letters and memorials for those who needed them,[3]while busy upon his new book.
Without the gifts which are in favor at court—unskilled in the arts of solicitation—we can imagine, with a man of Cervantes' temperament, what a special hell it must have been—"in suing long to bide." About this time he seems almost to have dropped out of life. The four years between 1598 and 1602 are the obscurest in his story. We do not know where he lived or what he did. It was the crisis of the struggle with his unrelenting evil destiny. The presumption is that he was still in the South, engaged in his humble occupation of gathering rents, of buying grain for the use of the fleet, with intervals perhaps of social enjoyment among such friends as he had made at Seville; among whom is reckoned the painter Francisco de Pacheco. This was for our hero the darkest hour before the dawn. For already, according to my calculation, he must have begun to writeDon Quixote, being now (1602) in his fifty-fifth year.[4]He had duly qualified himself, by personal experience, to tell the story of the adventures of him who sought to revive the spirit of the ancient chivalry. His own romance was ended. The pathetic lines of Goethe might seem to be written for his own case:
"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,Wer nicht die kummervollen NächteAuf seinem Bette weinend sass,Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte."[5]
"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,Wer nicht die kummervollen NächteAuf seinem Bette weinend sass,Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte."[5]
"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,
Wer nicht die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte."[5]
Never had any man of letters to go through a severer ordeal. At last his genius found the true path for which it had been beating about so many years; but not until his prime of life had passed, when even that brave heart must have been chilled and that gay spirit deadened.
In 1601 Philip III, at the instance of the Duke of Lerma, removed the court to the old capital of Castile, Valladolid—by nature far better situated for a metropolis than Madrid, which had been the choice of his grandfather, Charles V. Thither Cervantes repaired, in 1603, doubtless with some hope of gleaning some crumbs of the royal favor. He was no more fortunate with the new King than he had been with the old. Despairing of place or patronage, he turned, with his brave spirit unquenched as by the record sufficiently appears, to completing this new thing among books.
Don Quixotewas probably finished by the beginning of 1604, though some further time elapsed, as it seems, before the author had courage to go to print. His genius had lain fallow for twenty years. He was now old, and had written nothing, or at least published nothing, sinceGalatea. What fame was left to him he had earned as a poet among many poets. As an author, if he was remembered at all, it was in a line wholly different from that which he now essayed. There is reason to believe that the manuscript of the new book was in circulation among those who called themselves the author's friends, as was the custom of the age, before he found a patron and a publisher.[6]The publisher was got at last in Francisco Robles, the King's printer, to whom the copyright was sold for ten years.[7]The patron appeared in the person of the Duque de Bejar, a nobleman described by a writer of that age—Cristobal de Mesa—as himself both a poet and a valiant soldier. The choice was not altogether a happy one, for the Duke of Bejar might be said to have an ancestral claim to be regarded as a patron of books of chivalries. It was to his great-grandfather that one of the silliest and most extravagant of the romances had been dedicated by the author, Feliciano de Silva, who is the writer specially ridiculed by Cervantes—the very book which is the subject of a parody in the opening chapter ofDon Quixote.[8]The Duke of Bejar was noted, moreover, for his own uncommon affection for the books of chivalries then in fashion, and it is probable that he at first understoodDon Quixoteto be one such as he was in the habit of reading. Learning of his mistake, he refused, it is said, the dedication, and withdrew his patronage from the author. Then, according to the pleasant story first told by Vicente de los Rios, was enacted that scene which has been so favorite a subject with modern artists. Cervantes begged of the Duke to give him a hearing before deciding against his book; upon which he was permitted to read a chapter, which the Duke found so much to his taste that he graciously readmitted the author into his favor and consented to receive the dedication. There is another tradition which imputes to the Duke's confessor—an ecclesiastic who must have had a cleaner nose for heterodoxy than most of his fellows—the original rejection of the dedication by the Duke, the alteration in its wording, and the subsequent neglect of the author.[9]The dedication which now does duty at the opening of the First Part ofDon QuixoteI have shown to have been tampered with by someone bearing no good-will to Cervantes.
The privilege of publication is dated September 26th, and theTasaDecember 20,1604. The book itself, the First Part ofDon Quixote(it was not so called in the first edition, of course), was printed by Juan de la Cuesta during 1604, and published at Madrid in January, 1605.[10]The impression was very carelessly made, and swarms with blunders, typographical and otherwise, showing that it was not corrected or revised by the author. The press-work, however, is quite equal in execution to that of most books of that age.
The reception whichDon Quixotemet with on its first appearance was cordial beyond all precedent, and such as must have convinced the author, who was evidently doubtful of his new experiment, that here at last his genius had found its true field of exercise. The persons of culture, indeed, received the book coldly. The half-learned sneered at the title as absurd and at the style as vulgar. Who was thisingenio lego—this lay, unlearned wit—"a poor Latin-less author," which is what they said of Shakespeare—outside of thecultosproper, of no university education—who had dared to parody the tastes of the higher circles? The envy and malice of all his rivals—especially of those who found themselves included in the satire—even the great Lope himself, the phoenix of his age, then at the height of his glory—spoke out, with open mouth, against the author. The chorus of dispraise was swelled by all those, persons chiefly of high station, whose fashion of reading had been ridiculed. A book, professing to be of entertainment, in which knights and knightly exercises were made a jest of—in which peasants, innkeepers, muleteers, and other vulgar people spoke their own language and behaved after their own fashion—was a daring innovation, all the more offensive because the laugh was directed at what was felt to be a national infirmity. Who was the bold man who, being neither courtier nor ecclesiastic, made sport for the world out of the weaknesses ofcaballeros? An old soldier of Lepanto, indeed! Lepanto was a name outworn. Spain was now in a new world. Crusades against the unbeliever, even those more popular ones which combined the saving of souls with the getting of gold, were long out of fashion. Lastly, the entire ecclesiastical body—the formidable phalanx of the endowed, with their patrons dependents, and dupes—though they were too dull to perceive and too dense to feel the shafts aimed at obscurantism and superstition, had something more than a suspicion that this book calledDon Quixotewas a book to be discouraged.
In spite of the frowns and sneers of the quality, however, and the ill-concealed disgust of the learned,Don Quixotewas received with unbounded applause by the common people.[11]Those best critics in every age and country, the honest readers, who were neitherbourgeoisnor genteel, neither learned nor ignorant, welcomed the book with a joyous enthusiasm, as a wholly new delight and source of entertainment. Nothing like it had ever appeared before. It was an epoch-marking book, if ever there was one.
The proud and happy author himself spoke of his success with a frank complacency which, in any other man, would savor of vanity. Some seven or eight editions ofDon Quixoteare supposed to have been printed in the first year, of which six are now extant—two of Madrid, two of Lisbon, and two of Valencia.[12]The number of copies issued from the press in one year was probably in excess of the number reached by any book since the invention of printing.[13]But though all Spain talked ofDon Quixoteand readDon Quixote, and though the book brought him much fame, some consolation, and a few good friends, it does not appear to have helped to mend the fortunes of Cervantes in any material degree. In accordance with the usual dispensation, the author derived the least benefit from his success. Francisco Robles and Juan de la Cuesta, doubtless, made a good thing of it; but to Miguel de Cervantes there must have come but a small share of the profit. The laws of copyright were, in that age, little regarded; and it may be questioned whether, in a book published in Madrid, they could be enforced outside of Castile. The pirates and the wreckers were busy uponDon Quixotefrom its very earliest appearance; and its quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury.
Taking the object ofDon Quixoteto be, what Cervantes declared it—"the causing of the false and silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind"—no book was ever so successful. The doughtiest knight of romance never achieved an adventure so stupendous as that which Miguel de Cervantes undertook and accomplished. With his pen, keener than the lance of Esplandian or Felixmarte, he slew the whole herd of puissant cavaliers, of very valiant and accomplished lovers. Before him went down the Florisandros and Florisels, the Lisuartes and Lepolemos, the Primaleons and the Polindos, and the whole brood of the invincible. Scarcely a single romance was printed, and not one was written, after the date of the publication ofDon Quixote.[14]Such a revolution in taste was never accomplished by any single writer, in any age or country.
A few words only are here needed, in the discussion of that question which has occupied so largely the ingenuity of writers, native and foreign, as to what was the object of Cervantes in writingDon Quixote. There are those who insist upon seeking in every work of humor or of wit some meaning other and deeper than in the book appears, as though it were impossible that an author should be disinterested or write merely out of the fulness of his heart or pride in his work. With Cervantes' own declaration, more than once repeated, of the purpose of his book the critics will not be content. So good a book must have had a better reason for being than Cervantes' dislike of the fantastic books of the later chivalry. Who, then, was the man—the original of Don Quixote? Against whom was the satire levelled? Of course nothing was then known to the world outside of poor Don Rodrigo de Pacheco, the Argamasillanhidalgo. Some great man Cervantes must have intended to ridicule. It was Charles V, said some. It was his son Philip, cried others—ignoring the absurdity of the Prudent one losing his wits through excessive reading of romances. It was the Duke of Lerma—or the Duke of Osuna—or some other great man, or Cervantes' wife's cousin, who opposed his marriage with Catalina. It was Ignatius Loyola—our own countryman, the good John Bowle, suggested.
Surely these various theories are a little far-fetched and not a little grotesque and absurd. What there is in either of the two Spanish monarchs to liken him to the Knight of La Mancha it is difficult to see. Those who have looked upon that wonderful equestrian picture of Titian's in the Museo at Madrid, with its weird, weary, far-off expression, are irresistibly led to think of Don Quixote; but the converse is by no means so clear that on looking at Don Quixote we are tempted to think of that most unromantic of monarchs, Carlos Quinto.[15]His son is still more unlike his supposed portrait. As to the Duke of Lerma, they who can believe, on the faith of the cock-and-bull stories told by the Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy and the Jesuit Rapin, that Cervantes satirized the all-powerful minister in revenge for personal injuries suffered at his hands, may be consigned to the same limbo with the believers in the Bacon-Shakespeare. The theory about Loyola, first mooted by Bowle, the English commentator, is of all, perhaps, not the least absurd. The one shred by which it hangs is a passage inDon Quixotewhere the angry Biscayan, the adversary of Don Quixote, is made a native of Azpeitia—this being the name of the obscure village where Loyola was born.
A sufficient answer to all these theories is that contained in the book itself. Surely no one has readDon Quixotewith profit to himself who has been unable to see that the hero is not one whom the author desired to revile or to malign. Never was a satire like this, which leaves us full of love and sympathy for the object. And why cannot we believe the author when he avers that never did his humble pen stoop to satire? He meant, of course, the satire of persons as distinguished from the reprehension and the ridicule of human follies and general vices. As a lampoon,Don Quixotecould hardly have endured to this day. The spirit which has given it eternal life is love, and not hate.
To estimate the worth of the service performed by Cervantes—not in abolishing romance, as has been absurdly said, still less in discrediting chivalry, as with even a more perverse misconception of his purpose has been suggested, but in purging books of fiction of their grossness and their extravagance, and restoring romance to truth and to nature—we have to consider the enormous influence exercised by this pernicious literature over the minds of the people of Spain in the sixteenth century.
The ceaseless wars with the Moors had trained the whole manhood of the nation to soldiership. The trade of fighting was familiar to every man of good birth, so that the word for "knight" (caballero) came to be synonymous with that for "gentleman." The constant exercise in arms made of chivalry, in Spain, a more solemn and serious calling than elsewhere. As a native writer says, with equal point and spirit, there was developed by the chronic war with the Moor acaballerismo—there is none but a Spanish word for a quality purely indigenous—essentially distinct from the gay, fantastic chivalry of the North. It extended to all classes of the people. It was not confined to the aristocracy. "Every Spaniard was a warrior, every warrior a noble, and every noble a knight of his country."[16]They had not to go far to seek for adventures. They had the Paynim at home: Mahound and Termagaunt were at their doors. There was a constant supply at hand of men of the wrong faith and alien habits—the delight in fighting whom was enhanced by the fact that they equally were possessed of the chivalric fervor, and, though Moors and misbelievers, gentlemen still and cavaliers.[17]The long and desperate struggle for existence evolved the highest qualities of the race. And small wonder it was that out of that fruitful soil which had grown the Cid and the warriors of the heroic age, who should be rightly classed as prechivalric, there sprung up that ranker produce, the knights-errant. Of these, the seekers after adventure, the bohemians of the knightly order, Spain, as her native historians boast, was the teeming mother. No other country in that age, or in the previous one, could show the world such a scene as that gravely enacted before King Juan II and his court, when eighty knights ran a-tilt with each other, and incurred serious loss of limb and permanent injury to their persons, in order that one of them might fulfil a fantastic vow made to his mistress.[18]
Knight-errantry, which was a caprice in France and in England, in Spain was a calling. No other country could afford such a field for it, and to no other society was it so well suited. The grave and wise Fernando de Pulgar, the counsellor and chronicler of Ferdinand and Isabella, speaks with complacency of the noblemen he knew who had gone into foreign countries in search of adventures, "so as to gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant and hardy knights for the gentlemen of Castile"—boasting that there were more Spanish knights of the errant sort than of any other nation.
The romance of chivalry was the natural growth of this fashion of knight-errantry; and, like its parent, flourished nowhere so luxuriantly as in Spain.Amadis Of GaulandBelianis Of Greeceare, in fact, as much "racy of the soil" asDon Quixoteitself.
There were some simple or devout enough to take the romance for a gospel, who believed in Amadis as much as in any other hero or saint. In theArte de Galanteria, written by Francisco de Portugal about the close of the sixteenth century, it is mentioned that a Portuguese poet, Simon de Silveira, once swore upon the Evangelists that he believed the whole ofAmadisto be true history. This is capped by another story in the same book of how a certain knight came home from hunting and found his wife and daughters dissolved in tears. Asking them what was the matter—whether any child or relation was dead—they said "No; but Amadis is dead!" They had come to the 174th chapter ofLisuarte of Greece, where the old Amadis finally dies.
The influence of thePalmerinsand of the Carlovingian romances, which form a class by themselves, was scarcely inferior to that ofAmadis.Palmerin of Englandhimself, the patriarch of the family—that "Palm of England," as Cervantes calls him—may be placed second to his rival in merit. The difference in spirit is great between the two; forAmadisreally is, though in its present form of the fifteenth, of the fourteenth century, when chivalry was in its early prime; andPalmerinwas not written till the sixteenth century, when the true ideal of knighthood had already been dimmed by the lust of gold-seeking and religious adventure. Southey, perhaps, ranksPalmerintoo high in the literary scale by placing it on a level withAmadis, and averring that he knew "no romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos—the Florisels and the Florisandos—were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending scale; to pile up adventure upon adventure; to make the dragons fiercer, the giants huger, the fighting more terrible, and the slaughter more bloody. The popular appetite, which craved for more and more excitement with every successive stimulant, could only be fed by inventions so monstrous that it is a wonder the stomach of the readers of romances of chivalry did not reject the nauseous aliment. Yet there is no evidence of any decline in the production of these books up to the date of the appearance ofDon Quixote.
It was to do battle with this brood of fabled monsters, against whom the pulpit and the parliament had preached and legislated in vain, that Cervantes took up his pen. The adventure was one reserved for his single arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success such as must have astonished our hero himself, as we know by many signs that it disgusted and irritated many of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service performed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, has been greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more certain than that his aim inDon Quixotewas, primarily, to correct the prevailing false taste in literature. What moral and social results followed were the necessary consequences of the employment of his rare wit and humor on such a work. There is no reason to believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more serious intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give "a pastime to melancholy souls"[19]in destroying "the authority and influence which the books of chivalries have in the world and over the vulgar." That he was not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly romances as such—still less by any ambition to repress the spirit of chivalry, or to purge the commonwealth of social and political abuses—is abundantly proved by the whole tenor of his book, if not by the evidence of his life. His own tastes strongly inclined him to books of romance. Perhaps no one in that age had read more of those books, or was so deeply imbued with their spirit.
The opinion of an acute Spanish writer, Don Vicente de Salva, on this point we hold to be a very sensible one—"Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalries, but only to purge away their follies and impossibilities." What isDon Quixoteitself, it is shrewdly added, but a romance of chivalry, "which has ruined the fortunes of its predecessors by being so immensely in advance of them"?[20]What was Cervantes' own last book, as we shall presently show, but in some kind a romance of chivalry—not free, alas! from some of the very errors he had himself burlesqued? Nay, what was Cervantes' own life but a romance of chivalry?
That, after all, the overthrow of the books of chivalries was but a small part of the good work which Cervantes performed inDon Quixoteis only to say that, like all great writers, he "builded better than he knew." The pen of the genius, as Heine says, is ever greater than the man himself. Rejecting all the many subtle and ingenious theories as to what was Cervantes' object in writing his book; that it was a crusade against enthusiasm, as even Heine seems to suspect; that it was a missionary tract, intended to destroy popery and throw down antichrist, as some, even bearded men, have dared to suggest; that it was a programme of advanced liberalism artfully veiled under a mask of levity, and, indeed, the forerunner of that gospel of sentimental cosmopolitanism since preached by other eminent persons supposed to resemble Cervantes in their characters or Don Quixote in their careers—I hold that the author wrote but out of the fulness of his own heart, giving us, by a happy impulse, a fable in which are transparently figured his own character, his own experiences, and his own sufferings. What is the key but this to the mystery which makes this book, on a purely local subject of passing interest, the book of humanity for all time—as popular out of Spain as among Spaniards? A mere burlesque would have died with the books which it killed. A satire survives only so long as the person or the thing satirized is remembered. ButDon Quixotelives, and, by a miracle of genius, keepsAmadisandPalmerinalive.
The invention is the most simple, as it is the most original, in literature. FromDon Quixotedates an epoch in the art of fiction. For once Cervantes was happy in his opportunity. And what is the secret of his success? It is that this "child of his sterile, ill-cultured wit" is no creature of pure fancy, but fashioned in the very likeness of its parent, drawn out of his life, shaped after his pattern—an image of its creator. How could Cervantes' romance fail of holding the field against all the romances? It was his own life from which he drew—that life which had been a true knight-errantry. The hero himself, the enthusiast, nursed on visions of chivalry, who is ever mocked by fortune; the reviver of the old knighthood, who is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the baser sort; who, in spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indignities he receives, never ceases to command our love and sympathy—who is he but the man of Lepanto himself, whose life is a romance at least as various, eventful, and arduous; as full of hardships, troubles, and sadness; as prolific of surprising adventures and strange accidents, as the immortal story he has written? This is the key toDon Quixote, which, unless we use, we shall not reach to the heart of the mystery.
EARLIEST POSITIVE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA
A.D. 1606
LOUIS BECKEandWALTER JEFFERY
As shown by the authors of the following account, there is no lack of evidence that it was belief in a great southern land which led early geographers and sailors to belief in the existence of the Australian continent. Notwithstanding this, it is held by some students of the subject to be doubtful whether the first navigators who reached the shores of Australia set out with any expectation of discovering a great land in the south.Whether this was the case or not, it is argued that the earliest achievements in that quarter were either of no definite consequence or were imperfectly estimated by those who made or promoted the discoveries in connection with which not even their names have been preserved.The narrative of Becke and Jeffery, with its references to other leading authorities, furnishes the completest and most recent information on this subject available within the compass of a reasonably brief survey.
As shown by the authors of the following account, there is no lack of evidence that it was belief in a great southern land which led early geographers and sailors to belief in the existence of the Australian continent. Notwithstanding this, it is held by some students of the subject to be doubtful whether the first navigators who reached the shores of Australia set out with any expectation of discovering a great land in the south.
Whether this was the case or not, it is argued that the earliest achievements in that quarter were either of no definite consequence or were imperfectly estimated by those who made or promoted the discoveries in connection with which not even their names have been preserved.
The narrative of Becke and Jeffery, with its references to other leading authorities, furnishes the completest and most recent information on this subject available within the compass of a reasonably brief survey.
Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some evidence had been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has been asserted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the west coast of Australia was touched by the Spanish and the Portuguese during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was for a great antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific was, to the explorers, a matter of minor importance; New Guinea, although visited by the Portuguese in 1526, up to the time of Captain Cook was supposed by Englishmen to be a part of the mainland; and the eastern coast of Australia, though touched upon earlier and roughly outlined upon maps, remained unknown to them until Cook explored it.
Early Voyages to Australia, by R.H. Major, printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1859, is still the best collection of facts, and contains the soundest deductions from them on the subject, and although ably written books have since been published, the industrious authors have added little or nothing in the way of indisputable evidence to that collected by Major. The belief in the existence of the Australian continent grew gradually and naturally out of a belief in a great southern land. G.B. Barton, in an introduction to his valuable Australian history, traces this from 1578, when Frobisher wrote:
"Terra Australis seemeth to be a great, firm land, lying under and about the south pole, being in many places a fruitful soil, and is not yet thoroughly discovered, but only seen and touched on the north edge thereof by the travel of the Portiugales and Spaniards in their voyages to their East and West Indies. It is included almost by a parallel, passing at 40 degrees in south latitude, yet in some places it reacheth into the sea with great promontories, even into the tropic Capricornus. Only these parts are best known, as over against Capo d'buona Speranza (where the Portiugales see popinjayes commonly of a wonderful greatness), and again it is known at the south side of the Straight of Magellanies, and is called Terra del Fuego. It is thought this south land, about the pole Antarctic, is far bigger than the north land about the pole Arctic; but whether it be so or not, we have no certain knowledge, for we have no particular description thereof, as we have of the land under and about the north pole."
Then Purchas, in 1578, says: "This land about the Straits is not perfectly discovered, whether it be continent or islands. Some take it for continent, and extend it more in their imagination than any man's experience toward those islands of Saloman and New Guinea, esteeming (of which there is great probability) that Terra Australis, or the Southern Continent, may for the largeness thereof take a first place in order and the first in greatness in the division and parting of the Whole World."
The most important of the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three ships. One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after, the ships commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge. He subsequently found that the land seen was an island group, and so determined to sail westward in pursuance of the scheme of exploration. In about the month of August he fell in with a chain of islands—now called the Louisiade Archipelago and included in the British possession of New Guinea—which he thought, reasonably enough, was the beginning of New Guinea, but which really lies a little to the southeast of that great island. As he could not weather the group, he bore away to the southward, and his subsequent proceedings are here quoted from Burney'sVoyages:
"We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2½ degrees, which brought us into 9 degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from 3 to 9 fathoms, which extends along the coast to 7½ south latitude; and the end of it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth to 11 degrees south latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands, without number, by which we passed; and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to your Majesty. They give (us) much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south latitude and ten leagues from the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to the north."
"We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2½ degrees, which brought us into 9 degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from 3 to 9 fathoms, which extends along the coast to 7½ south latitude; and the end of it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth to 11 degrees south latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands, without number, by which we passed; and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to your Majesty. They give (us) much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south latitude and ten leagues from the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to the north."
The "very large islands" seen by Torres were, no doubt, the hills of Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, and so he, all unconsciously, had passed within sight of the continent for which he was searching. A copy of the report by Torres was lodged in the archives of Manila; and when the English took that city in 1762, Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer, discovered it, and gave the name of Torres Straits to what is now well known as the dangerous passage dividing New Guinea from Australia. De Quiros, in his ship, made no further discovery. He arrived on the Mexican coast in October, 1606, and did all he could to induce Philip III of Spain to sanction further exploration, but without success.
Of the voyages of the Dutch in Australian waters much interesting matter is available. Major sums up the case in these words: "The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity: that in the sixteenth century—the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries—there are indications on maps of the great probability of Australia having already been discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documents immediately describing these voyages have not been found."
The period of known Dutch discovery begins with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, and a knowledge of the west coast of Australia grew with the growth of the Dutch colonies, but grew slowly, for the Dutchmen were too busy trading to risk ships and spend time and money upon scientific voyages.
In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions, signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio van Diemen, begin with a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this document an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made. Tasman, in his first voyage, had discovered the island of Van Diemen, which he named after the then Governor of Batavia, but which has since been named Tasmania, after its discoverer. During this first voyage the navigator also discovered New Zealand, passed round the east side of Australia without seeing the land, and on his way home sailed along the northern shore of New Guinea.
But to come back to the summary of Dutch voyages found in Tasman's instructions: During 1605 and 1606 the Dutch yacht Duyphen made two exploring voyages to New Guinea. On one trip, the commander, after coasting New Guinea, steered southward along the islands on the west side of Torres Straits to that part of Australia, a little to the west and south of Cape York, marked on modern maps as Duyphen Point, thus unconsciously—for he thought himself still on the west coast of New Guinea—making the first authenticated discovery of the continent.
Dirk Hartog, in command of the Endragt, while on his way from Holland to the East Indies, put into what Dampier afterward called Shark's Bay, and on an island, which now bears his name, deposited a tin plate with an inscription recording his arrival, and dated October 25, 1616. The plate was afterward found by a Dutch navigator in 1697, and replaced by another, which, in its turn, was discovered in July, 1801, by Captain Hamelin, of the Naturaliste, on the well-known French voyage in search of the ill-fated La Perouse. The Frenchman copied the inscription, and nailed the plate to a post, with another recording his own voyage. These inscriptions were a few years later removed by De Freycinet, and deposited in the museum of the Institute of Paris. Hartog ran along the coast a few degrees, naming the land after his ship, and was followed by many other voyagers at frequent intervals down to the year 1727, from which time Dutch exploration has no more a place in Australian discovery.
During the one hundred twenty-two years of which we have records of their voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by Cook and his successors, was of small account, yet, considering the state of nautical science, and that the ships were for the most part Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north, westward of the great Australian Bight in the south, the Dutchmen had touched at intervals the whole coast line.
But before leaving the Dutch period there are one or two voyages that, either on account of their interesting or important character, deserve brief mention. In 1623 Arnhem's Land, now the northern district of the northern territory of South Australia, was discovered by the Dutch yachts Pesa and Arnhem. This voyage is also noteworthy on account of the massacre of the master of the Arnhem and eight of his crew by the natives while they were exploring the coast of New Guinea. In 1627 the first discovery of the south coast was made by the Gulde Zeepard, and the land then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board the ship on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to Japan as ambassador from Holland.
In the year 1628 a colonizing expedition of eleven vessels left Holland for the Dutch East Indies. Among these ships was the Batavia, commanded by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier—probably by the commander of the Leeuwin, who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point of the continent. The Batavia, which carried a number of chests of silver money, went to pieces on the reef. The crew of the ship managed to land upon the rocks, and saved some food from the wreck, but they were without water. Pelsart, in one of the ship's boats, spent a couple of weeks in exploring the inhospitable coast in the neighborhood, in the hope of discovering water, but found so little that he ultimately determined to attempt to make Batavia and from there bring succor to his ship's company. On July 3d he fell in with a Dutch ship off Java and was taken on to Batavia. From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck, arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible experience, which is related in Therenot'sRecueil de Voyages curieux, and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is extracted:
"While Pelsart is soliciting assistance, I will return to those of the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the ship and take her to Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy. This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the assistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterward to cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party; but before inbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to another. The entire crew was divided (living upon) between three islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of Batavia, was the greatest number of men."One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a search of twenty days he made the preconcerted signal by lighting three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they joined together, and, going in search of Weybehays, informed him of the horrible massacre that had taken place."Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard, and to defend himself from their assassins if they should make an attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned, which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with Weybehays' company, and in the mean while broke open the chests of merchandise which had been saved from the vessel. Jerome Cornelis caused clothing to be made for his company out of the rich stuffs which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one of the daughters of the minister to a principal member of his party, abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain rules for the future conduct of his men."After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected captain-general by a document which he compelled all his companions to sign. He afterward sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire, although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the ends of which were armed with spikes."Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company, offering to each a sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this assistance he might easily compass his design. His letters, which were without effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the attack, but with little success."Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate Sardam. As he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a circumstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four, informed him of the massacre, and advised him to return as speedily as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning been at close quarters with them. Pelsart perceived at the time the two shallops coming toward him, and had scarcely got on board his vessel before they came alongside."He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold and silver, and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into the sea or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled to submit, they threw away their weapons, and, being ordered on board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or assisted in the assassination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays brought his prisoner on board."On September 18th the captain and the master pilot, taking with them ten men of Weybehays' company, passed over in boats to the island of Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons."
"While Pelsart is soliciting assistance, I will return to those of the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the ship and take her to Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy. This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the assistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterward to cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party; but before inbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to another. The entire crew was divided (living upon) between three islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of Batavia, was the greatest number of men.
"One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a search of twenty days he made the preconcerted signal by lighting three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they joined together, and, going in search of Weybehays, informed him of the horrible massacre that had taken place.
"Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard, and to defend himself from their assassins if they should make an attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned, which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with Weybehays' company, and in the mean while broke open the chests of merchandise which had been saved from the vessel. Jerome Cornelis caused clothing to be made for his company out of the rich stuffs which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one of the daughters of the minister to a principal member of his party, abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain rules for the future conduct of his men.
"After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected captain-general by a document which he compelled all his companions to sign. He afterward sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire, although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the ends of which were armed with spikes.
"Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company, offering to each a sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this assistance he might easily compass his design. His letters, which were without effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the attack, but with little success.
"Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate Sardam. As he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a circumstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four, informed him of the massacre, and advised him to return as speedily as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning been at close quarters with them. Pelsart perceived at the time the two shallops coming toward him, and had scarcely got on board his vessel before they came alongside.
"He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold and silver, and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into the sea or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled to submit, they threw away their weapons, and, being ordered on board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or assisted in the assassination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays brought his prisoner on board.
"On September 18th the captain and the master pilot, taking with them ten men of Weybehays' company, passed over in boats to the island of Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons."
Pelsart remained another week at the Abrolhos, endeavoring to recover some of the Batavia's treasure, and succeeded in finding all but one chest. The mutineers were tried by the officers of the Sardam, and all but two were executed before the ship left the scene of their awful crime. The two men who were not hanged were put on shore on the mainland, and were probably the first Europeans to end their lives upon the continent. Dutch vessels for many years afterward sought for traces of the marooned seamen, but none was ever discovered.
The 1644 voyage of Tasman was made expressly for the purpose of exploring the north and northwestern shores of the continent, and to prove the existence or otherwise of straits separating it from New Guinea. Tasman's instructions show this, and prove that while the existence of the straits was suspected, and although Torres had unconsciously passed through them, they were not known. Tasman explored a long length of coast line, establishing its continuity from the extreme northwestern point, Arnhem Land, as far as the twenty-second degree of south latitude, Exmouth Gulf. He failed to prove the existence of Torres Straits; but to him, it is generally agreed, is due the discovery and naming of the Gulf of Carpentaria—Carpenter, in Tasman's time, being president at Amsterdam of the Dutch East India Company—and the naming of a part of North Australia, as he had previously named the island to the south, after Van Diemen. From this voyage dates the name "New Holland." The great stretch of coast lines embracing his discoveries became known to his countrymen as Hollandia Nova, a name which, in its English form, was adopted for the whole continent, and remained until it was succeeded by the more euphonious name of Australia. Tasman continued doing good service for the Dutch East India Company until his death, about 1659, at Batavia.