Discovery of Australia by de Quiros in the Year 1606

Excerpt

Pedro Fernandez de Quiros was the least of the brilliant galaxy of Portuguese and Spanish explorers who throughout two centuries, by their maritime skill and enterprise, won immortal fame for their respective countries, and extended far, to the east and to the west the limits of Christian civilisation. He was a Portuguese by birth, but at the period of which we treat Portugal and Spain were united under the Spanish sceptre, and hence it was under the Spanish flag and by the aid of the Spanish court that he achieved his discoveries.