supposed to illustrate; to do so would be to
forget their chief purpose, the decorative. But, allowing for the liberty
usually granted to the artist, nay, often exacted by him, the scenes
depicted are not borrowed from the realms of "Idealism" to the extent
that has been supposed by certain commentators.

The kangaroo is not represented; no, nor the gum-tree either, perhaps!
But that clump of bamboos* on the top of a hill is not a volcano in full
eruption, as a learned critic once ventured to assert.

[* Bamboos are plentiful on the north-western coasts of Australia,
planted, no doubt, by Malay fishermen in search of trepang, who from time
immemorial frequented those shores.]

We see, on these charts, fairly correct presentments of that animal seen
for the first time by the Spaniards in the straits to which Magellan gave
his name, and described by the Italian narrator, Pigafetta, who
accompanied the first circumnavigators.

Pigafetta says:--
"This animal has the head and ears of a mule, the body of a camel, the
legs of a stag, and the tail of a horse, and like this animal it neighs."

The animal thus described by Pigafetta is the Guanaco, _Camelus
huanacus_, and it is not astonishing to find it represented on the
Australian continent, for we know* that this continent was supposed to be
connected with _Tierra del Fuego_ and was sometimes called _Magellanica_,
in consequence. In the chart that I am describing, Australia is called
Jave-la-Grande--La Grande Jave would have been the proper French
construction; but the term Jave-la-Grande is merely the translation of
Java Maior, the Portuguese for Marco Polo's Java Major.

[* See remark above.]

The great Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, described Java from hearsay as
being the largest island in the world, and the Portuguese finding this to
be incorrect, as far as their knowledge of Java proper was concerned, but
finding nevertheless, this "largest island in the world" to the
south-east of Java, in fact, approximately in the longitudes and
latitudes described by Polo; the Portuguese, I say, did the best thing
they could both for Marco Polo's sake and their own, when they marked it
on their charts where it was said to be, and with the name given to it by
Polo, for he calls it Java Major to distinguish it from Sumatra, which
island he named Java Minor.

The channel or river, marked between Java and Australia, is evidently a
concession due to the fact that a passage was