See, on this subject, my paper in the proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia under the heading "Is Australia the Baptismal Font of Brazil ?" Vol.VI., No.

1, Sydney, N.S.W.] But, after all, until the very date of the expedition which resulted in the first discovery can be ascertained, the question of nationality of the first discoverers is a much more interesting one.
Having no other documentary evidence except these old charts, the first conclusion drawn was that as they are all written in French, the French were the discoverers in spite of the fact that no French claim had been made.
The late R.H.Major, the author of "Early Voyages to.

Australia," having thoroughly considered the possibility of a French claim, came to the conclusion that such a claim was untenable.

Being somewhat shaken, however, in his first belief of a Portuguese discovery, he was led to adopt a Provencal theory to explain certain words which on these old Gallicized charts, were neither Portuguese nor French.

The whole subject was in this state of incertitude and confusion, when, a few years ago, having occasion to examine minutely these old documents, I discovered on the oldest of them a phrase in Portuguese, which, curiously enough, had escaped the notice of all the learned critics who had made a special study of this early specimen of cartography.
The phrase I had discovered, "_Anda ne barcha_," or "No boats go here," situated as it is in the Gulf of Carpentaria, had, in my mind, a very great significance, since it not only proves the Portuguese origin of the chart, but also the genuineness of the discovery made in that as it showed that the discoverers were fully aware of the shallowness of the water off this part of the coast of Australia.
It must be admitted however, that on the original chart the nautical phrase "_Anda ne barcha_," may refer to the difficulty of navigating the strait between Java and Bali, or the one between Bali and Lomboc.
When I say that this phrase proves the Portuguese origin of the chart, I do not mean to convey the idea that I accepted it, there and then, as a proof of Portuguese origin, but I rather took it as a clue, for the meaning of those words had evidently not been understood by the copyist, since he had left them in their original form, instead of translating them into French, and had mistaken them for the names of two islands.
This clue led me to make a special study of every word on the chart that had proved so interesting, the result being that I came to the conclusion that the western coasts of Australia had been chartered by the Portuguese, whereas the eastern coasts, which fell within the hemisphere allotted to the Spaniards, had been discovered and charted by them.
If we take for granted--and I think we may--that these charts are unquestionably of Portuguese and Spanish origin, the next point of importance that calls for our attention relates to the peculiar configuration, or, to be more precise, the strange distortion which all these specimens have undergone.