description of it will be given in the next chapter.

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the period was one of great maritime
activity, and many unauthorised and clandestine voyages were also
performed, in the course of which Australia may have been discovered, for
the western and eastern coasts were charted before the year 1530, as we
shall see by and by.

CHAPTER II.

VOYAGES TO THE SPICE ISLANDS AND DISCOVERY OF PAPUA.

Whilst the Portuguese and Spaniards were fighting for the possession of
the "Spicery," as they sometimes called the Moluccas, the old dispute
about the line of demarcation was resumed in Spain and Portugal. It was
referred to a convocation of learned geographers and pilots, held at
Badajoz, on the shores of the Guadiana.

Those learned men talked and argued, and their animated discussions
extended over many months; but no decision was arrived at.

Sebastian del Cano, who had been appointed commander after Magellan's
death at the Philippines, and had returned to Spain with the remnant of
the expedition, had been called upon to report his views at the meetings,
but he, also, had not been able to prove under what longitude the Spice
Islands were situated; and now another fleet was ordered to be fitted out
to make further investigations.

It was entrusted to Garcia Jofre de Loaysa, with del Cano as pilot-major,
and other survivors of Magellan's armada.

They sailed from Coruna in July, 1525, with an armament of seven ships.
Every precaution was taken to ensure the success of the voyage, but the
expedition proved a most disastrous one notwithstanding. During a fearful
storm del Cano's vessel was wrecked at the entrance to Magellan's
Straits, and the captain-general was separated from the fleet.

Francisco de Hoces, who commanded one of the ships, is reported to have
been driven by the same storm to 55 deg. of south latitude, where he
sighted the group of islands which became known at a later date under the
name of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.

It was April before the rest of the fleet entered Magellan's Straits, and
the passage was tedious and dismal, several of the sailors dying from the
extreme cold. At last, on the 25th of May, 1526, they entered the Pacific
Ocean, where they were met by another storm, which dispersed the fleet
right and left.

On this occasion an extraordinary piece of good luck befel one of the
small vessels of the fleet--a pinnace or row boat, of the k