Page "Terra Australis" Paragraph 23

Over the centuries the idea of Terra Australis gradually lost its hold.

In 1615, Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten's rounding of Cape Horn proved that Tierra del Fuego was a relatively small island, while in 1642 Abel Tasman's first pacific voyage proved that Australia was not part of the mythical southern continent.

Much later, James Cook sailed around most of New Zealand in 1770, showing that even it could not be part of a large continent.

On his second voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude, at some places even crossing the south polar circle, showing that any possible southern continent must lie well within the cold polar areas.

There could be no extension into regions with a temperate climate, as had been thought before.

In 1814, Matthew Flinders published the book A Voyage to Terra Australis in which he wrote: