In 1619 the brothers Garcia and Gongalo de Nodal first circumnavigated the archipelago, which was afterwards visited at intervals by Captain Sir John Narborough (1670), M.
After he had observed the transit of Venus at Tahiti, he circumnavigated New Zealand and went in search of the eastern coast of the great continent whose western shores had long been known to the Dutch.
Meanwhile, in 1577, Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe, and on his way home had touched at Ternate, one of the Moluccas, the king of which island agreed to supply the English nation with all the cloves it produced.
It was circumnavigated by one of their vessels in 1525, and the general outline of the coasts is correctly given in their maps at a time when separate portions of Celebes, such as Macassar and Menado, are represented as distinct islands.
Further light was thrown on the relations of Franz Josef Land and Spitsbergen during 1897 by the discoveries of Captain Robertson of Dundee, and Wyche's Land was circumnavigated by Mr Arnold Pike and Sir Savile Crossley.