had proposed for conquest. Motivations of the Italo-Portuguese project What the real objects of the Italo-Portuguese project were it is impossible to determine. Velho's 1561 chart of the New World is remarkable for its authoritative treatment of Brazil, La Plata, and Peru. It shows “Potosi”, as well as “Valdepariso” in Chile. South of the Strait of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego appears as in the conventional form of an ambiguous tip of a potential continental mass otherwise not delineated. Velho was evidently much more interested in South America than in Terra Australis, but such map evidence carries very little weight. The world map in the Cosmography that Velho compiled in 1568 for the benefit of King Charles IX at the request of Francesco d’Albagno is noteworthy for not having any representation whatever of the southern continent, which would appear to confirm that he had no interest in Terra Australis. Discoveries linked to the hypothesis Castelnau first mentioned “d’Albaigne” in October 1577 when reporting Frobisher's alleged discovery of gold mines. He thought these vast gold-bearing lands “vers le Nort” must be those d’Albaigne had offered to acquire for Charles years before. In July 1578 he reported that one Gilbert (Humphrey Gilbert) had the queen's permission to make an expedition “par la partie australe où il y a une infinité de terres inhabitées d’autres que de sauvaiges et qui sont en mesme paralelle et climat que la France et l’Angleterre et au plus loing de quarante cinq et cinquante degrez de l’equinoctial, tirant à l’autre Pole, où il y a à faire des Empires et des Monarchies les quelles choses Gilbert en a communicqué avec moy (by the southern part where there is an infinity of lands uninhabited except for savages, which are in the same latitude and climate as France and England and at a distance of forty-five tofifty degrees from the Equator, taken from the other Pole, where there are empires and kingdoms to be made; which matters Gilbert had spoken about with me)”. Gilbert had added that he thought the Marquis de la Roche had the same object in mind, but that the land in question was quite big enough for everyone: whoever arrived first should take the left hand or the right hand course as he pleased, leaving the alternative to the other. Castelnau observed that this was Francisque d’Albaigne's proposal, which the late Gaspard de Coligny had often