Terra Australis Incognita Or, A New Southern Discovery, containing A Fifth Part

Queirós, Pedro Fernandes de, -1615Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
29K words
Chapters
3

Tags

English Originals Historical Geography Historical ReappraisalDiscoveryNature ObservationAdventure JourneyMaritime ExplorationExpeditionWorld OrderOceania ExplorationExotic CultureColonial Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Terra Australis Incognita; Or, A New Southern Discovery, containing A Fifth PartAuthor: Queirós, Pedro Fernandes de, -1615,Language: English, Class: DU: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: History of Oceania (South Seas), Release Date: Jun 4, 2018

Editor's review

This account of a voyage by Pedro Fernández de Quirós is a key early modern European text in the imagining and search for the "unknown southern land." It is not a work of modern geography but a report with a strong sense of mission: drawing on his own voyage, the author argues to the Crown for the existence, resources, and colonial prospects of the southern continent, interweaving descriptions of Indigenous customs with plans for evangelization. Its value today lies in understanding how the discourse of European expansion in the Age of Discovery was produced—how geographical discovery, religious mission, and imperial interest intertwined. The original is in English, brief, and structured mainly as exposition and argument, making it suitable as supplementary reading in maritime history, colonial history, or Pacific area studies. Read it with a critical eye toward historical sources, distinguishing the author's assertions from later geographical conclusions and noting where imagination, rumor, and observation are mixed. For readers who enjoy primary documents and are willing to discern the prejudices of an era between the lines, this small book offers firsthand material and a point of entry for reflection.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the introduction or publisher's note to understand the historical context of Quirós's voyage, then proceed to the main text.
  2. Mark the author's factual statements versus speculative assertions as you read, cultivating the habit of distinguishing historical sources.
  3. Read alongside a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century map of the Pacific to locate the place names and routes mentioned.
  4. After finishing, read it against other European voyage accounts to compare how different authors imagined the southern continent.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Is this book a novel or a real voyage record? It is an expository document Quirós wrote based on his voyage experience, intended to petition and argue before the Crown; it is not a work of fiction. But it contains rumor, speculation, and religious imagination, so it should be read as a historical source rather than a modern geographical report.
Can I understand it without a background in maritime history? The original is in English and brief, with moderate language difficulty. Readers without background knowledge can finish it, but it is advisable to first grasp the basic outline of the Age of Discovery; otherwise one may mistake the author's claims for confirmed geographical facts.
What are the features of this edition? This is a public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, in the English original, under the category of Oceanian history. It is easy to obtain free and to search, but it has no detailed modern scholarly annotations or translation, making it suitable for readers who can read English directly.
Why is the book titled "the unknown southern land"? "Terra Australis Incognita" was the name given on early modern European maps to the hypothetical southern continent. Quirós uses it as his title to claim that he discovered this land and to assert it before the Crown; the title itself reflects Europeans' geographical imagination of the Southern Hemisphere and their expansionist intentions at the time.

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About the author

Queirós, Pedro Fernandes de, -1615 Author · Portuguese

Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (Queirós, Pedro Fernandes de, -1615) was a Portuguese navigator who made long voyages in the South Pacific and is remembered in history for naming the island of Espírito Santo; he died in Panama. Publicly available information about his life is limited, and neither his year of birth nor his early years are clearly recorded. The library holds two of his works, which mainly describe Pacific voyages and the search for a southern continent between 1595 and 1606. One of them, Terra Australis Incognita Or, A New Southern Discovery, containing A Fifth Part, takes the "unknown southern land" directly as its subject, reflecting the geographical imagination and verification of the Southern Hemisphere by Europeans during the Age of Exploration. Writing of this kind combines navigational records with geographical description and is important primary material for the study of early Pacific exploration.