The second archipelago comprises
Gilolo, Moratai, Celebes, or Macassar, &c. The third group contains the
great isle of Mindinao, Soloo, and most of the southern Philippines.
The
fourth archipelago was formed of the Banda isle, Amboyna, &c.; the largest
of these were discovered by the Portuguese in the year 1511: from Amboyna
they drew their supplies of cloves.
The Portuguese knew little of the fifth archipelago, because the
inhabitants were ignorant of commerce, and totally savage and uncultivated.
From the description given of them by the early Portuguese writers, as
totally unacquainted with any metal, making use of the teeth of fish in its
stead, and as being as black as the Caffres of Africa, while among them
there were some of an unhealthy white colour, whose eyes were so weak that
they could not bear the light of the sun; - from these particulars there can
be no doubt that the Portuguese had discovered New Guinea, and the adjacent
isles, to whose inhabitants this description exactly applies. These islands
were the limit of the Portuguese discoveries to the East: they suspected,
however, that there were other islands beyond them, and that these ranged
along a great southern continent, which stretched as far as the straits of
Magellan. It is the opinion of some geographers, and particularly of Malte
Brun, that the Portuguese had visited the coasts of New Holland before the
year 1540; but that they regarded it as part of the great southern
continent, the existence of which Ptolemy had first imagined.
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