<P> Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through the Straits of Magellan in 1520, assumed that the islands of Tierra del Fuego to the south were an extension of this unknown southern land, and it appeared as such on a map by Ortelius: Terra australis recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita ("Southern land recently discovered but not yet fully known"). </P> <P> European geographers connected the coast of Tierra del Fuego with the coast of New Guinea on their globes, and allowing their imaginations to run riot in the vast unknown spaces of the south Atlantic, south Indian and Pacific oceans they sketched the outlines of the Terra Australis Incognita ("Unknown Southern Land"), a vast continent stretching in parts into the tropics . The search for this great south land or Third World was a leading motive of explorers in the 16th and the early part of the 17th centuries . In 1599, according to the account of Jacob le Maire, the Dutch Dirck Gerritsz Pomp observed mountainous land at latitude (64 °). If so, these were the South Shetland Islands, and possibly the first European sighting of Antarctica (or offshore - lying islands belonging to it). Other accounts, however, do not note this observation, casting doubt on their accuracy . It has been argued that the Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla claimed to have sighted "snow - covered mountains" beyond the 64 ° S in 1603, but this claim is not generally recognized . </P> <P> Quirós in 1606 took possession for the king of Spain all of the lands he had discovered in Australia del Espiritu Santo (the New Hebrides) and those he would discover "even to the Pole". </P> <P> Francis Drake like Spanish explorers before him had speculated that there might be an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego . Indeed, when Schouten and Le Maire discovered the southern extremity of Tierra del Fuego and named it Cape Horn in 1615, they proved that the Tierra del Fuego archipelago was of small extent and not connected to the southern land . </P>

Is antarctica totally situated in the antarctica circle