. de beaucoup d'isles_; the letter R, in Spanish, meant either river or
coast. This appellation refers to the locality of the Burnett river,
where the coast is lined with numerous islands. The term may, therefore,
mean either "coast of many islands," or "river of many islands." _Coste
des Herbaiges_, Coast of Pastures; it has been suggested that this name
gave rise to the term Botany Bay, chosen by Sir Joseph Banks,* instead of
Stingeray Bay, given by Cook. The locality, however, corresponds to a
stretch of coast further north than Botany Bay.

[* It will be remembered that this chart once belonged to Sir Joseph
Banks. See above.]

CHAPTER VII.

PIERRE DESCELIERS' MAP.

This is a map of the same type as the one I have just described. It forms
part of another large manuscript planisphere, draughted and illuminated
by Pierre Desceliers, a priest of Argues near Havres, and it bears in
bold characters an inscription to that effect with the date 1550.

At first sight the most, remarkable feature of this map is the display of
descriptive matter contained in cartouches spread here and there between
the illuminations. These, however, do not refer to Australia but are
descriptive of such countries as Java, Sumatra, Pegu, Malacca, Ceylon,
the Andaman Islands, etc.

The only illustrations which might be supposed to appertain to Australia
are those _not alluded to in the French text_, a fact which suggests that
the other, extraneous matter, has been interpolated.

The illustrations, not alluded to in the French text, may, therefore,
have belonged to the prototypic map, such are the representations of
trees, rough guniah-looking dwellings, guanacos, and those strange, huts
on the western coast, which may have been inspired by some freak of
nature as seen by Dampier on the same coast some hundred and thirty odd
years after these charts were painted. Dampier says: "There were several
things like haycocks standing in the Savannah, which at a distance we
thought were houses, looking just like the Hottentots' houses at the Cape
of Good Hope; but we found them to be so many rocks."

Dampier and his companions may have mistaken some anthills for rocks.
Peron the French explorer describes some huge dome-shaped ant-hills seen
on this coast, and Captain Pelsart, wrecked in 1629, also describes some
ant-hills seen by him and his companions when in search of water on this
same coast in latitude 22 degrees south.

In 1818, Allan Cu