Chica Sive Patagonica et Australis Terra 1597

Wytfliet’s famous map of the southern continent from the first atlas of the Americas, Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum, sive Occidentis Notitia published in 1597.

In the top portion of the map, South America is shown as being separated by a strait from a large southern continent named Australis Terrae Pars. The naming of C. Della Victoria and the illustration of Magellan’s ship Victoria indicates that it is the Strait of Magellan. The lower part of the map shows a polar projection, with Terra Australis as a large landmass made up of four peninsulas, one reaching towards New Guinea which is shown as an island.

Schilder discusses this map at length and points to its significance to Major Collingridge and others ‘as proof that Australia had already been discovered in the sixteenth century…’.

Wytfliet notes ‘The Australis Terra is the most southern of all lands; it is separated from New Guinea by a narrow strait; its shores are hitherto but little known, since, after one voyage and another, that route has been deserted, and seldom is the country visited unless when sailors are driven there by storms. The Australis Terra begins at two or three degrees from the equator, and is maintained by some to be of so great an extent that if it were thoroughly explored it would be regarded as a fifth part of the world.’

Wyfliet’s depiction of a narrow strait separating Australis Terra from New Guinea, predates that of Torres’s discovery in 1606. Torres’s passage was not known to the world until the end of the 18th century, when Dalrymple discovered Torres’s journal of the voyage amongst archives in Manila.

From Wyfliet’s Descriptionis Ptolemaicae augmentum sive Occidentalis.

References:

Clancy 8.2, Schilder pp. 18-19, Fig. 6, Tooley 1430, Pl. 102.