Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/34

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INTRODUCTION.

Lochac and this island of Pentam, the sea, for the space of sixty miles, is not more than four fathoms in depth, which obliges those who navigate it to lift the rudders of their ships, in order that they may not touch the bottom. After sailing these sixty miles in a south-easterly direction, and then proceeding thirty miles further, you arrive at an island, in itself a kingdom, named Malaiur, which is likewise the name of its city. The people are governed by a king, and have their own peculiar language. The town is large and well built. A considerable trade is there carried on in spices and drugs, with which the place abounds. Nothing else that requires notice presents itself. Proceeding onwards from thence, we shall now speak of Java Minor."

That this description does not apply to Australia the reader of the present day may readily conclude. It has received its explanation in the judicious notes of Marsden, who shows how, from the circumstances, it is highly probably that Lochac is intended for some part of the country of Cambodia, the capital of which was named Loech, according to the authority of Gaspar de Cruz, who visited it during the reign of Sebastian, king of Portugal. See Purchas, vol. iii, p. 169. The country of Cambodia, moreover, produces the gold, the spices, and the elephants which Marco Polo attributes to Lochac. Pentam is reasonably supposed by Marsden to be Bintam, and the island and kingdom of Malaiur (Maletur, in the Basle edition of 1532, included in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus) to be the kingdom of the Malays. In the early engraved maps of the sixteenth century, however, we see the effects of this description exhibited in a form calculated to startle the inquirer

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