ough
with intention to sail round this island,* but the season and strong
currents would not allow of this, although I ran along a great part of
it. In what I saw there are very large mountains. It has many ports,
though soma of them are small. All of it is well watered with rivers.

[* Again, Torres states that Espiritu Santo is an Island, see 8
paragraphs previous.]

We had at this time nothing but bread and water. It was the depth of
winter, and I had sea, wind, and ill will of my crew against me. All this
did not prevent me from reaching the latitude mentioned (21 deg. S.), which I
passed by one degree, and would have gone further if the weather had
permitted,* for the ship was good. It was proper to act in this manner,
for these are not voyages performed every day, nor could Your Majesty
otherwise be properly informed.

[* When Torres says, he "would have gone further," etc., he evidently
thought he was not far from the Australian Continent; a few days' sail,
three at the most, would have brought him to Cape Capricorne, on the
coast of Queensland, a little to the south of the "Lost Bay" that was
marked on some of the maps of the period.]

Going in the said latitude on a S.W. course, we had no signs of land that
way.

From hence I stood back to the N.W. till 11 deg. 30' S. latitude; there we
fell in with the beginning of New Guinea, the coast of which runs W. by
N. and E. by S.

I could not weather the E. point, so I coasted along to the westward on
the south side.

I may here interrupt Torres' description in order to point out the
various discoveries which he made along the southern shores of New Guinea
during the course of his voyage to Manila in which he passed through the
straits that bear his name.

The recovery of some ancient manuscript charts and other documents throws
considerable light on this perilous and interesting voyage.*

[* The charts in question were pillaged from the Spanish archives during
the wars of Napoleon I., and taken to Paris. There, buried away and
uncatalogued, they were found, some years ago, by a friend of mine, who
caused them to be returned to their original owners and acquainted me
with their existence, thus enabling me to get copies of them which were
first published to the English speaking world in my work on "The
Discovery of Australia," in the year 1894.]

There lies at the eastern extremity of New Guinea a group of beautiful
islands supposed to have been first sigh