e Quiros to turn the
vessel's head for Mexico, which they reached after some terrible months
of hunger and thirst.

#3. Torres.#--The other ships waited for a day or two, but no signs being
seen of their consort, they proceeded in search of it. In this voyage
Torres sailed round the land, thus showing that it was no continent, but
only an island. Having satisfied himself that it was useless to seek for
De Quiros, he turned to the west, hoping to reach the Philippine
Islands, where the Spaniards had a colony, at Manila. It was his
singular fortune to sail through that opening which lies between New
Guinea and Australia, to which the name of "Torres Strait" was long
afterwards applied. He probably saw Cape York rising out of the sea to
the south, but thought it only another of those endless little islands
with which the strait is studded. Poor De Quiros spent the rest of his
life in petitioning the King of Spain for ships to make a fresh attempt.
After many years he obtained another order to the Governor of Peru, and
the old weather-beaten mariner once more set out from Spain full of
hope; but at Panama, on his way, death awaited him, and there the
fiery-souled veteran passed away, the last of the great Spanish
navigators. He died in poverty and disappointment, but he is to be
honoured as the first of the long line of Australian discoverers. In
after years, the name he had invented was divided into two parts; the
island he had really discovered being called Espiritu Santo, while the
continent he thought he had discovered was called Terra Australis. This
last name was shortened by another discoverer--Flinders--to the present
term Australia.

#4. The Duyfhen.#--De Quiros and Torres were Spaniards, but the Dutch also
displayed much anxiety to reach the great South Continent. From their
colony at Java they sent out a small vessel, the _Duyfhen_, or _Dove_,
which sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and passed half-way down
along its eastern side. Some sailors landed, but so many of them were
killed by the natives that the captain was glad to embark again and sail
for home, after calling the place of their disaster Cape Keer-weer, or
Turnagain. These Dutch sailors were the first Europeans, as far as can
now be known, who landed on Australian soil; but as they never published
any account of their voyage, it is only by the merest chance that we
know anything of it.

#5. Other Dutch Discoverers.#--During the next twenty