Jave-la-Grande: A Place Name Chart of its East Coast

Abstract

The Harleian and other Dieppe maps made in France in the mid-16th century are manifestly based on Portuguese originals, yet no surviving Portuguese maps show any evidence of this mysterious landmass. Suggestions that the discovery of Australia was successfully kept secret seem hardly credible in view of the well-known presence in France of Portuguese cartographers, the defection to Spain of Magellan and the cartographer Diogo Ribeiro amongst others, and the fact that an Italian, Alberto Cantino, could illegally purchase in Lisbon in 1502 so important a world map as the one commonly called the 'Cantino' after him.