noon
It separates Queensland from the huge island of Papua , also called New Guinea . Papua is 400 leagues long by 130 leagues wide , with a surface area of 40,000 geographic leagues . It 's located between latitude 0 degrees 19 ' and 10 degrees 2 ' south , and between longitude 128 degrees 23 ' and 146 degrees 15 ' . At noon , while the chief officer was taking the sun 's altitude , I spotted the summits of the Arfak Mountains , rising in terraces and ending in sharp peaks . Discovered in 1511 by the Portuguese Francisco Serrano , these shores were successively visited by Don Jorge de Meneses in 1526 , by Juan de Grijalva in 1527 , by the Spanish general Alvaro de Saavedra in 1528 , by Inigo Ortiz in 1545 , by the Dutchman Schouten in 1616 , by Nicolas Sruick in 1753 , by Tasman , Dampier , Fumel , Carteret , Edwards , Bougainville , Cook , McClure , and Thomas Forrest , by Rear Admiral d'Entrecasteaux in 1792 , by Louis-Isidore Duperrey in 1823 , and by Captain Dumont d'Urville in 1827 . `` It 's the heartland of the blacks who occupy all Malaysia , '' Mr. de Rienzi has said ; and I had n't the foggiest inkling that sailors ' luck was about to bring me face to face with these daunting Andaman aborigines . So the Nautilus hove before the entrance to the world 's most dangerous strait , a passageway that even the boldest navigators hesitated to clear : the strait that Luis Vaez de Torres faced on returning from the South Seas in Melanesia , the strait in which sloops of war under Captain Dumont d'Urville ran aground in 1840 and nearly miscarried with all hands .