Portugal's impressive maritime history can be traced to Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) and to the great Portuguese explorers of the late fifteenth century, such as Vasco da Gama (c. 1460-1524) and Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450-1500). Inspired by Prince Henry's dream that Portugal should promote trade and spread the Christian faith to India, Portuguese mariners ventured into the Atlantic Ocean and around Africa's Cape of Good Hope in search of a passage to India and the Spice Islands. Within a century, Portugal had established a colonial empire in South America and in the Pacific Far East.
On their voyages to the Dutch East Indies, Portuguese sailors were sometimes blown off course by treacherous winds in the Indian Ocean and found themselves along the shoreline of an unknown land somewhere southeast of the Dutch East Indies. The mariners charted part of the northern and eastern coasts of the territory and named this region "Java La Grande." Sixteenth-century cartographers were certain that Java La Grande was the southern continent that had long been sought. One of the Dieppe maps, the 1536 Dauphin Map, shows a rough outline of northeastern Australia as charted by Portuguese sailors.
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