probable that a considerable number of voyages were made to the west
coasts of New Holland, of which no account has ever been printed. By the
obliging and intelligent assistance of Mr. Frederick Müller, of
Amsterdam, (a rare example of a bookseller who interests himself not
only in obtaining curious early books illustrative of the history of his
country, but in minutely studying that history himself), the editor has
been enabled to procure some documents from the Hague, which have never
before been printed, and one which, although in print, has become
exceedingly scarce, and has never before been rendered into English.
The earliest of these is an account of the ship _De Vergulde Draeck_, on
the Southland, and the expedition undertaken both from Batavia and the
Cape of Good Hope in search of the survivors, etc., drawn up and
translated from authentic MS. copies of the logbooks in the Royal
Archives at the Hague. _De Vergulde Draeck_, which set sail from the
Texel in October 1655, was wrecked on a reef on the west coast, in
latitude 30 degrees, 40 minutes, and a hundred and eighteen souls were
lost. The news was brought to Batavia by one of the ship’s boats,
sixty-eight of the survivors having remained behind, exerting themselves
to get their boat afloat again, that they might send some more of their
number to Batavia. The Governor General immediately dispatched the
flyboat the _Witte Vaclk_, and the yacht the _Goede Hoop_, to the
assistance of those men, and also to help in the rescue of the specie
and merchandize lost in the _Vergulde Draeck_. This expedition was
attended with bad success, as they reached the coast in the winter time.
Similar ill luck attended the flyboat _Vinck_, which was directed to
touch at New Holland, in its voyage from the Cape to Batavia in 1657, to
search for the unfortunate men who had been left behind. The company
next dispatched from Batavia two galliots, the _Waeckende Boey_, and the
_Emeloort_, on the 1st of January, 1658. These vessels also returned to
Batavia in April of the same year, having each of them separated, after
parting company by the way, sailed backwards and forwards again and
again, and landed parties at several points along the coast. They had
also continually fired signal guns night and day, without, however,
discovering either any Dutchmen, or the wreck of the vessel. The only
things seen were some few planks and blocks, with a piece of the mast, a
taffrail, fragments of barrels, and other objects scattered here and
there along the coast, and supposed to be remnants of the wreck. This
account, with a description of the west coast of the South Land, by the
Captain Samuel Volkersen, of the Pink _Waeckende Boey_, is accompanied
by copies of original charts, showing the coast visited by this vessel
and the _Emeloort_, never before printed. These documents are followed
by an extract from the Burgomaster Witsen’s _Noord en Oost Tartarye_,
descriptive of the west coast, a portion of which is plainly derived
from the account of Abraham Leeman, the mate of the _Waeckende Boey_.
We must not here omit to mention, that in the year 1693, appeared a work
bearing the following title: Les Avantures de Jaques Sadeur dans la
découverte et le voyage de la Terre Australe, contenant les coutumes et
les mœurs des Australiens, leur religion, leurs exercises, leurs études,
leurs guerres, leurs animaux, particuliers à ce pays et toutes les
raretez curieuses qui s’y trouvent. À Paris, chez Claude Barbin, au
Palais, sur le second perron de la Sainte Chapelle, 1693. In the Vannes
edition, p. 3, the author’s Christian name is given Nicolas. An English
translation appeared in the same year, entitled “A new discovery of
Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World, by James Sadeur, a
Frenchman, who, being cast there by a shipwreck, lived thirty-five years
in that country, and gives a particular description of the manners,
customs, religion, laws, studies and wars of those southern people, and
of some animals peculiar to that place, with several other rarities.
These memoirs were thought so curious, that they were kept secret in the
closet of a late great minister of state, and never published till now,
since his death. Translated from the French copy printed at Paris by
publick authority, April 8. Imprimatur, Charles Hern, London. Printed
for John Dunton, at the Raven, in the Poultry, 1693.” The work is purely
fictitious throughout.
The next Dutch voyage of which we have succeeded in finding an account,
is that of Willem de Vlamingh, in 1696, which also owed its origin to
the loss of a ship, the _Ridderschap van Hollandt_. This vessel had been
missing from the time she had left the Cape of Good Hope in 1684 or
1685, and it was thought probable she might have been wrecked upon the
great South Land, and that some of the crew might, even after this lapse
of time, be still living. The commodore, Willem de Vlaming, who was
going out to India with the _Geelvink_, _Nyptang_, and _Wezel_, was,
therefore, ordered to make a search for them. The account of this
voyage, which was printed at Amsterdam in 1701, 4to, is exceedingly
scarce; and after many years enquiry, the editor deemed himself
fortunate in procuring it through the medium of Mr. Müller, of
Amsterdam, and a translation of it is here given. The search of De
Vlaming was, however, fruitless, and the two principal points of
interest were the finding of the plate already described, with the
inscription commemorating the arrival and departure of Dirk Hartog, in
1616, and the discovery of Swan River, where the embodiment of the
poet’s notion of a _rara avis in terris_ was for the first time
encountered, and two of the black swans were taken alive to Batavia.
Meanwhile, the shores of New Holland had been visited by a countryman of
our own, the celebrated Dampier. In the buccaneering expedition in which
he made a voyage round the world, he came upon the north-west coast in
16 degrees, 50 minutes due south from a shoal, whose longitude is now
known to be 122¼ degrees east. Running along the shore N.E. by E.,
twelve leagues to a bay or opening convenient for landing, a party was
sent ashore to search for water, and surprised some of the natives, some
of whom they tried to induce to help in filling the water casks, and
conveying them to the boat. “But all the signs we could make,” says
Dampier, “were to no purpose; for they stood like statues, staring at
one another, and grinning like so many monkeys. These poor creatures
seem not accustomed to carry burdens; and I believe one of our ship’s
boys, of ten years old, would carry as much as one of their men.” In his
description of the natives, he agrees with Tasman in their being “a
naked black people, with curly hair, like that of the negroes in Guinea;
but he mentions other circumstances which are not mentioned in the note
from Tasman.” He describes them as “the most miserable people in the
world. The Hottentots compared with them are gentlemen. They have no
houses, animals, or poultry; their persons are tall, straight bodied,
thin, with long limbs; they have great heads, round foreheads, and great
brows; their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the flies out of
their eyes, for they are so troublesome here, that no fanning will keep
them from one’s face; so that, from their infancy, they never open their
eyes as other people do, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they
hold up their heads as if they were looking at something over them. They
have great bottle noses, full lips, wide mouths; the two fore teeth of
the upper jaw are wanting in all of them; neither have they any beard.
Their hair is short, black and curled, and their skins coal black, like
that of the negroes in Guinea. Their only food is fish, and they
consequently search for them at low water; and they make little weirs or
dams with stones across little coves of the sea. At one time, our boat
being among the islands, seeking for game, espied a drove of these
people swimming from one island to another, for they have neither boats,
canoes, nor bark logs.” Dampier remained there from January 5 to March
12, 1688, but is silent as to any dangers upon the twelve leagues of
coast seen by him.
In the year 1699, Great Britain being at peace with the other maritime
states of Europe, king William ordered an expedition for the discovery
of new countries, and for the examination of some of those already
discovered, particularly New Holland and New Guinea. Dampier’s graphic
narrative of his buccaneering voyages caused the Earl of Pembroke to
select him to conduct the expedition. The _Roebuck_, a ship belonging to
the royal navy, was equipped for the purpose. After a voyage of six
months, Dampier struck soundings in the night of August 1st, 1699, upon
the northern part of the Abrolhos shoal, in latitude about 27 degrees,
40 minutes S. Next morning he saw the main coast, and ran northward
along it, discovering in 26 degrees, 10 minutes, an opening two leagues
wide, but full of rocks and foul ground. August 6th, he anchored in Dirk
Hartog’s Road, at the entrance of a sound which he named Shark’s Bay:
where he remained eight days examining the sound, cutting wood upon the
islands, fishing, etc., and gives a description of what was seen in his
usual circumstantial manner. His description of the kangaroo, probably
the first ever given of that singular animal, is a curious one. “The
land animals we saw here were only a sort of raccoons, but different
from those of the West Indies, chiefly as to their legs; for these have
very short forelegs, but go jumping, and like the raccoons are very good
meat.”
Sailing northward along the coast, he found an archipelago extending
twenty leagues in length, which has been more recently examined by
Captain King. He anchored in lat. 20 degrees, 21 minutes, under one of
the largest of the islands, which he named Rosemary Island. This was
near the southern part of De Witt’s Land; but besides an error in
latitude of 40 minutes, he complains that in Tasman’s charts “the shore
is laid down as all along joining in one body or continent, with some
openings like rivers, and not like islands, as really they are.” “By
what we saw of them, they must have been a range of islands, of about
twenty leagues in length, stretching from E.N.E. to W.S.W., and, for
aught I know, as far as to those of Shark’s Bay; and to a considerable
breadth also, for we could see nine or ten leagues in amongst them,
towards the continent or main land of New Holland, _if there be any such
thing hereabouts_: and by the great tides I met with awhile afterwards
more to the north-east, I had a strong suspicion that here might be a
kind of archipelago of islands; and a passage, possibly, to the south of
New Holland and New Guinea, into the great South Sea eastward.
“Not finding fresh water upon such of the islands as were visited that
day, Captain Dampier quitted his anchorage next morning, and ‘steered
away E.N.E., coasting along as the land lies.’ He seems to have kept the
land in sight, in the daytime, at the distance of four to six leagues;
but the shore being low, this was too far for him to be certain whether
all was main land which he saw; and what might have been passed in the
night was still more doubtful.
“August 30th, being in latitude 18 degrees, 21 minutes, and the weather
fair, Captain Dampier steered in for the shore; and anchored in eight
fathoms, about three-and-a-half leagues off. The tide ran ‘very swift
here; so that our nun-buoy would not bear above the water to be seen. It
flows here, as on that part of New Holland I described formerly, about
five fathoms.’
“He had hitherto seen no inhabitants; but now met with several. The
place at which he had touched in the former voyage ‘was not above forty
or fifty leagues to the north-east of this. And these were much the same
blinking creatures (here being also abundance of the same kind of flesh
flies teizing them), and with the same black skins, and hair frizzled,
tall and thin, etc., as those were. But we had not the opportunity to
see whether these, as the former, wanted two of their fore teeth.’ One
of them, who was supposed to be a chief, ‘was painted with a circle of
white paste or pigment about his eyes, and a white streak down his nose,
from his forehead to the tip of it. And his breast, and some part of his
arms, were also made white with the same paint.’
“Neither bows nor arrows were observed amongst these people: they used
wooden lances, such as Dampier had before seen. He saw no houses at
either place, and believed they had none; but there were several ‘things
like haycocks, standing in the savannah; which, at a distance, we
thought were houses, looking just like the Hottentots’ houses at the
Cape of Good Hope; but we found them to be so many rocks.’ These rocks
he could not have examined very closely; for there can be little doubt
that they were the anthills described by Pelsart as being ‘so large,
that they might have been taken for the houses of Indians.’
“The land near the sea coast is described as equally sandy with the
parts before visited, and producing, amongst its scanty vegetation,
nothing for food. No stream of fresh water was seen, nor could any, fit
to drink, be procured by digging.
“Quitting this inhospitable shore, Captain Dampier weighed his anchor on
September 5th, with the intention of seeking water and refreshments
further on to the north-eastward. The shoals obliged him to keep at a
considerable distance from the land, and finally, when arrived at the
latitude of 16 degrees, 9 minutes, to give up his project, and direct
his course for Timor.”
With the voyage of Dampier terminates the information gained of the
western coasts previously to the present century, which does not lie
within the range of our inquiries.
In 1705 another and last voyage was made by the Dutch for the discovery
of the north coast. The expedition consisted of three vessels, the
_Vossenbosch_, the _Wayer_, and the _Nova Hollandia_. The commander was
Martin van Delft. The journals appear to have been lost. At all events
they have not hitherto been found, but a report to the Governor-General
and Council of the discoveries and notable occurrences in the
expedition, was drawn from the written journals and verbal recitals of
the officers on their return, by the Councillors Extraordinary, Hendrick
Swaardecroon and Cornelis Chastelijn. This report is given for the first
time in English in the present collection, from which it appears that
the part of the coast visited was carefully explored, and that the Dutch
had intercourse with the natives, a result in which De Vlaming’s
expedition had entirely failed. In the miscellaneous tracts of Nicholas
Struyck, printed at Amsterdam, 1753, is also given an imperfect account
of this voyage as follows: “March 1st, 1705. Three Dutch vessels were
sent from Timor with order to explore the north coast of New Holland,
better than it had before been done. They carefully examined the coasts,
sand banks, and reefs. In their route to it, they did not meet with any
land, but only some rocks above water, in 11 degrees, 52 minutes south
latitude” (probably, says Flinders, the south part of the great Sahul
Bank, which, according to Captain Peter Heywood, who saw it in 1801,
lies in 11 degrees 40 minutes). “They saw the west coast of New Holland,
four degrees to the eastward of the east point of Timor. From thence
they continued their route towards the north, and passed a point, off
which lies a bank of sand above water, in length more than five German
miles of fifteen to a degree. After which they made sail to the east,
along the coast of New Holland; observing everything with care, until
they came to a gulf, the head of which they did not quite reach. I
(Struyck) have seen a chart made of these parts.”
Flinders remarks upon this account, “What is here called the west must
have been the north-west coast,” and he is right; for in the report here
printed, the country is called “Van Diemen’s Land,” lying, as we know,
on the north-west coast of New Holland, already in this introduction
frequently referred to in distinction from the island more generally so
known, and now called Tasmania. Flinders continues: “which the vessels
appear to have made somewhat to the south of the western Cape Van
Diemen. The point which they passed was probably this same cape itself;
and in a chart, published by Mr. Dalrymple, August 27th, 1783, from a
Dutch manuscript (possibly a copy of that which Struyck had seen), a
shoal, of thirty geographic miles in length, is marked as running off
from it, but incorrectly, according to Mr. M’Cluer. The gulf here
mentioned was probably a deep bay in Arnhem’s Land; for had it been the
Gulf of Carpentaria, some particular mention of the great change in the
direction of the coast would, doubtless, have been made.”
In the year 1718 a Mons. Jean Pierre Purry, of Neufchatel, published a
work entitled, _Mémoire sur le Pays des Caffres et la Terre de Nuyts par
rapport à l’utilité que la Compagnie des Indes Orientales en pourroit
rétirer pour son Commerce_, followed by a second memoir in the same
year. These publications were explanatory of a project he entertained of
founding a colony in the land of Nuyts. The scheme had been submitted to
the Governor-General, Van Swoll, at Batavia, but was discountenanced. It
subsequently met the same fate when laid by its author before the
Directors of the Dutch East India Company at Amsterdam. M. Purry shortly
afterwards brought his proposition before the West India Company, and it
was supposed by some that the voyage of Roggeween to the South Seas in
1721 was a result of this application; but it is distinctly stated by
Valentyn that it was an entirely distinct expedition. In 1699
Roggeween’s father had submitted to the West India Company a detailed
memoir on the discovery of the southern land; but the contentions
between Holland and Spain prevented the departure of the fleet destined
for the expedition, and it was forgotten. Roggeween, however, who had
received his father’s dying injunctions to prosecute this enterprize,
succeeded at length in gaining the countenance of the directors, and was
himself appointed commander of the three ships which were fitted out by
the company for the expedition. According to Valentyn, the principal
object of this voyage was the search for certain “islands of gold,”
supposed to lie in 56 degrees south latitude; but the professed purpose
was distinctly avowed by Roggeween to be directed to the south lands.
Although the expedition resulted in some useful discoveries, it did not
touch the shores of New Holland.
The last document in the collection here printed is a translation from a
little work published in Dutch, in 1857, by Mr. P. A. Leupe, Captain of
Marines in the Dutch Navy, “The Houtman’s Abrolhos in 1727,” detailing
the disasters of which those dangerous shoals had been the cause.
It will be seen that we have been unable to supply any descriptive
account of discoveries on the eastern coast of Australia. That it was
really discovered, and in all probability by the Portuguese, in the
early part of the sixteenth century, we have already endeavoured to
show. During more than two centuries from that period, it was probably
never visited by any European. The honour of exploring that portion of
the great island was reserved for the immortal Cook, who first saw that
coast on April 19th, 1770, but a reference to such well known
explorations certainly does not fall within the scope of antiquarian
investigation. The like may be said of the first visit to Van Diemen’s
Land, subsequent to Tasman’s discovery in 1642, which was made by Marion
a hundred and thirty years later.
In conclusion, it would be inappropriate to omit the remark that it is
to that most able and distinguished voyager, Matthew Flinders, to whose
valuable work, _A Voyage to Terra Australis_, the editor has been
greatly indebted for help in this introduction, that we have to give the
credit for the compact and useful name which Australia now bears. In a
note on page 111 of his introduction, he modestly says, “Had I permitted
myself any innovation upon the original term [Terra Australis], it would
have been to convert it into Australia, as being more agreeable to the
ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the
earth.”
* * * * *
It has been the habit, for the most part, of editors of works for the
Hakluyt Society, to endeavour to elucidate their text by introductions,
which have often reached to a considerable length. A very slight
consideration of the nature of the subjects which the Society professes
to deal with, will show the reasonableness, nay, even the necessity of
such introductions. When the attention of a reader is invited to the
narrative of a voyage, however interesting and curious in itself, which
carries him back to a remote period, it is but reasonable that he should
have explained to him the position which such a narrative, arbitrarily
selected, holds in the history of the exploration of the country treated
of. To do this satisfactorily is clearly a task requiring no little
labour, and although it may necessarily involve a somewhat lengthy
dissertation, certainly calls for no apology. Nevertheless, the simple
fact of an introduction bearing a length at all approaching to that of
the text itself, as is the case in the present volume, does, beyond
question, at the first blush, justly require an explanation. All the
publications of our Society consist of previously unpublished documents,
or are reprints or translations of narratives of early voyages become
exceedingly rare. But it is evidently matter of accident to what length
the text may extend, while it is equally evident that the introductory
matter illustrative of a small amount of text may be, of necessity,
longer than that required to illustrate documents of greater extent.
This is strikingly the case with the subject of the present volume. It
has been matter of good fortune that the editor has been enabled to
bring together even so many documents as are here produced, in
connection with the early discoveries of Australia, while the
enigmatical suggestions of early maps, unaccompanied by any descriptive
matter to be found after diligent research, has necessitated an inquiry
into their merits, which, though lengthy, it is hoped will not be deemed
unnecessary. This so called introduction in fact, in a great measure,
consists of matter, which, if supplied by original documents, would form
a component part of the text itself.
The editor cannot close his labours on this most puzzling subject of the
“Early Indications of Australia,” without expressing an earnest hope
that further researches may yet result in the production of documents,
as yet undiscovered, which may throw a light upon the history of the
exploration of this interesting country in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and, if possible, solve the great mystery which still hangs
over the origin of the early manuscript maps so fully treated of, and it
is hoped not without some advance towards elucidation, in this
introduction.
INDICATIONS OF AUSTRALIA,
ETC.
A MEMORIAL
ADDRESSED TO HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY PHILIP THE THIRD, KING OF SPAIN,
BY DR. JUAN LUIS ARIAS,
RESPECTING THE EXPLORATION, COLONIZATION, AND CONVERSION OF THE SOUTHERN
LAND.