Lilliput, it would thus appear, was situated somewhere in the neighbourhood of the great Bight of Australia.

This curious mixture of definite knowledge and vague ignorance on the part of Swift exactly corresponds to the state of geographical knowledge about Australia in his days, as is shown in the preceding map of those parts of the world, as given by the great French cartographer D'Anville in 1745 (p.

157).
These discoveries of the Spanish and Dutch were direct results and corollaries of the great search for the Spice Islands, which has formed the main subject of our inquiries.

The discoveries were mostly made by ships fitted out in the Malay archipelago, if not from the Spice Islands themselves.

But at the beginning of the eighteenth century new motives came into play in the search for new lands; by that time almost the whole coast-line of the world was roughly known.