La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. Vol. I

1966

Journals G161 H2 Ser.2 no. 126

Cambridge: Printed for the Hakluyt Society

The search for Terra Australis, the mythical ‘great south land’, was an on-going dream for many early mariners. Supported by Pope Clement III and King Philip III of Spain, the Portuguese navigator Fernández de Quirós (c.1565-1615) left Peru (El Callao) in December 1605 with 300 crew and soldiers; all in the name of Christianity and Science. Sailing west across the Pacific, he made landfall in May 1606 on what he named Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. He believed that it was the promontory of some great southern continent. On Espiritu Santo (actually the largest island in Vanuatu), he established a colony called Nova Jerusalem, which did not last. This Hakluyt publication contains Martin de Munilla’s daily record of Quirós’s voyage, and ‘The Islands and their Peoples’, a paper by Dunedin’s own Dr Gordon Parsonson. Here is a copy of the only known map drawn by Quirós, dated 1598.