Description

The Dutch Carstensz expedition, which explored south from New Guinea across Torres Strait, was responsible for the earliest published European charting of any part of the Australian coast.

This map by Jansson is probably based on the famously rare Blaeu map of 1635 titled India Quae Orientalis Dicitur et Insulae Adiacentes that lists the Carstensz landfalls on the Australian coastline.

Jansson’s chart is of further interest regarding lands imagined to exist deep in the southern hemisphere. It records a long group of islands situated in the southern waters of the Pacific (here noted by Jansson to have been discovered by Hernando Gallego in 1576). Gallego served as a pilot on the 1567-69 Pacific voyage of Alvaro de Mendaña, during which the Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal were discovered, amongst others. Gallego ‘grossly underestimated the archipelago’s distance from Peru, creating a misleading impression of the extent of the Pacific’ (Howgego). The depiction of the islands on this map reflects this original navigational error.