achievements in that quarter were either of no definite consequence
or were imperfectly estimated by those who made or promoted the
discoveries in connection with which not even their names have been
preserved.
The narrative of Becke and Jeffery, with its references to other
leading authorities, furnishes the completest and most recent
information on this subject available within the compass of a
reasonably brief survey.
Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the
Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories
showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some
evidence had been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was
discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has
been asserted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before
Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the
west coast of Australia was touched by the Spanish and the Portuguese
during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its
discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very
early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was
for a great antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific
was, to the explorers, a matter of minor importance; New Guinea, although
visited by the Portuguese in 1526, up to the time of Captain Cook was
supposed by Englishmen to be a part of the mainland; and the eastern
coast of Australia, though touched upon earlier and roughly outlined upon
maps, remained unknown to them until Cook explored it.
_Early Voyages to Australia_, by R.H. Major, printed by the Hakluyt
Society in 1859, is still the best collection of facts, and contains the
soundest deductions from them on the subject, and although ably written
books have since been published, the industrious authors have added
little or nothing in the way of indisputable evidence to that collected
by Major. The belief in the existence of the Australian continent grew
gradually and naturally out of a belief in a great southern land. G.B.
Barton, in an introduction to his valuable Australian history, traces
this from 1578, when Frobisher wrote:
"Terra Australis seemeth to be a great, firm land, lying under and about
the south pole, being in many places a fruitful soil, and is not yet
thoroughly discovered, but only seen and touched on the north edge
thereof by the travel of the Portiugales and Spaniards in their voyages
to their East and West Indies. It is included almost by a parallel,
passing at 40 degrees in south latitude, yet in some places it reacheth
into the sea with great promontories, even into the tropic Capricornus.
Only these parts are best known, as over against Capo d'buona Speranza
(where the Portiugales see popinjayes commonly of a wonderful greatness),
and again it is known at the south side of the Straight of Magellanies,
and is called Terra del Fuego. It is thought this south land, about the
pole Antarctic, is far bigger than the north land about the pole Arctic;
but whether it be so or not, we have no certain knowledge, for we have no
particular description thereof, as we have of the land under and about
the north pole."
Then Purchas, in 1578, says: "This land about the Straits is not
perfectly discovered, whether it be continent or islands. Some take it
for continent, and extend it more in their imagination than any man's
experience toward those islands of Saloman and New Guinea, esteeming (of
which there is great probability) that Terra Australis, or the Southern
Continent, may for the largeness thereof take a first place in order and
the first in greatness in the division and parting of the Whole World."
The most important of the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who
left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three ships.
One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who
is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island
groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New
Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra
Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after, the ships commanded by De
Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge.
He subsequently found that the land seen was an island group, and so
determined to sail westward in pursuance of the scheme of exploration. In
about the month of August he fell in with a chain of islands--now called
the Louisiade Archipelago and included in the British possession of New
Guinea--which he thought, reasonably enough, was the beginning of New
Guinea, but which really lies a little to the southeast of that great
island. As he could not weather the group, he bore away to the southward,
and his subsequent proceedings are here quoted from Burney's _Voyages_:
"We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned,
and diminished the latitude 2-1/2 degrees, which brought us into 9
degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from 3 to 9 fathoms,
which extends along the coast to 7-1/2 south latitude; and the end of
it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and
great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth
to 11 degrees south latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of
islands, without number, by which we passed; and at the end of the
eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large
islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited
by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances,
arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of
their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different
nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to
your Majesty. They give (us) much notice of other people, although as
yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this
bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in
twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south latitude and ten leagues from
the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the
north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So
we stood to the north."
The "very large islands" seen by Torres were, no doubt, the hills of Cape
York, the northernmost point of Australia, and so he, all unconsciously,
had passed within sight of the continent for which he was searching. A
copy of the report by Torres was lodged in the archives of Manila; and
when the English took that city in 1762, Dalrymple, the celebrated
geographer, discovered it, and gave the name of Torres Straits to what is
now well known as the dangerous passage dividing New Guinea from
Australia. De Quiros, in his ship, made no further discovery. He arrived
on the Mexican coast in October, 1606, and did all he could to induce
Philip III of Spain to sanction further exploration, but without success.
Of the voyages of the Dutch in Australian waters much interesting matter
is available. Major sums up the case in these words: "The entire period
up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two
phases of obscurity: that in the sixteenth century--the period of the
Portuguese and Spanish discoveries--there are indications on maps of the
great probability of Australia having already been discovered, but with
no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century
there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or
explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documents
immediately describing these voyages have not been found."
The period of known Dutch discovery begins with the establishment of the
Dutch East India Company, and a knowledge of the west coast of Australia
grew with the growth of the Dutch colonies, but grew slowly, for the
Dutchmen were too busy trading to risk ships and spend time and money
upon scientific voyages.
In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his
second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions,
signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio van Diemen, begin with
a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this
document an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made. Tasman,
in his first voyage, had discovered the island of Van Diemen, which he
named after the then Governor of Batavia, but which has since been named
Tasmania, after its discoverer. During this first voyage the navigator
also discovered New Zealand, passed round the east side of Australia
without seeing the land, and on his way home sailed along the northern
shore of New Guinea.
But to come back to the summary of Dutch voyages found in Tasman's
instructions: During 1605 and 1606 the Dutch yacht Duyphen made two
exploring voyages to New Guinea. On one trip, the commander, after
coasting New Guinea, steered southward along the islands on the west side
of Torres Straits to that part of Australia, a little to the west and
south of Cape York, marked on modern maps as Duyphen Point, thus
unconsciously--for he thought himself still on the west coast of New
Guinea--making the first authenticated discovery of the continent.
Dirk Hartog, in command of the Endragt, while on his way from Holland to
the East Indies, put into what Dampier afterward called Shark's Bay, and
on an island, which now bears his name, deposited a tin plate with an
inscription recording his arrival, and dated October 25, 1616. The plate
was afterward found by a Dutch navigator in 1697, and replaced by
another, which, in its turn, was discovered in July, 1801, by Captain
Hamelin, of the Naturaliste, on the well-known French voyage in search of
the ill-fated La Perouse. The Frenchman copied the inscription, and
nailed the plate to a post, with another recording his own voyage. These
inscriptions were a few years later removed by De Freycinet, and
deposited in the museum of the Institute of Paris. Hartog ran along the
coast a few degrees, naming the land after his ship, and was followed by
many other voyagers at frequent intervals down to the year 1727, from
which time Dutch exploration has no more a place in Australian discovery.
During the one hundred twenty-two years of which we have records of their
voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by
Cook and his successors, was of small account, yet, considering the state
of nautical science, and that the ships were for the most part Dutch East
Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west
coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north,
westward of the great Australian Bight in the south, the Dutchmen had
touched at intervals the whole coast line.
But before leaving the Dutch period there are one or two voyages that,
either on account of their interesting or important character, deserve
brief mention. In 1623 Arnhem's Land, now the northern district of the
northern territory of South Australia, was discovered by the Dutch yachts
Pesa and Arnhem. This voyage is also noteworthy on account of the
massacre of the master of the Arnhem and eight of his crew by the natives
while they were exploring the coast of New Guinea. In 1627 the first
discovery of the south coast was made by the Gulde Zeepard, and the land
then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on
the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board
the ship on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to Japan as ambassador
from Holland.
In the year 1628 a colonizing expedition of eleven vessels left Holland
for the Dutch East Indies. Among these ships was the Batavia, commanded
by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on
June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as
Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East
Indiaman some years earlier--probably by the commander of the Leeuwin,
who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point
of the continent. The Batavia, which carried a number of chests of silver
money, went to pieces on the reef. The crew of the ship managed to land
upon the rocks, and saved some food from the wreck, but they were without
water. Pelsart, in one of the ship's boats, spent a couple of weeks in
exploring the inhospitable coast in the neighborhood, in the hope of
discovering water, but found so little that he ultimately determined to
attempt to make Batavia and from there bring succor to his ship's
company. On July 3d he fell in with a Dutch ship off Java and was taken
on to Batavia. From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck,
arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the
absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible
experience, which is related in Therenot's _Recueil de Voyages curieux_,
and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is
extracted:
"While Pelsart is soliciting assistance, I will return to those of
the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you
that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at
Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the
coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the ship and take her to
Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy.
This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had
struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even
passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from
thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of
Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for
putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would
not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the
wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the
assistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterward to
cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was
necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party;
but before inbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to
sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to
another. The entire crew was divided (living upon) between three
islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of
Batavia, was the greatest number of men.
"One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to
another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a
search of twenty days he made the preconcerted signal by lighting
three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of
Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered
those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or
forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they
joined together, and, going in search of Weybehays, informed him of
the horrible massacre that had taken place.
"Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard,
and to defend himself from their assassins if they should make an
attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to
treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their
company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform
the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of
their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned,
which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven
children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with
Weybehays' company, and in the mean while broke open the chests of
merchandise which had been saved from the vessel. Jerome Cornelis
caused clothing to be made for his company out of the rich stuffs
which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom
he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding
the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one
of the daughters of the minister to a principal member of his party,
abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain
rules for the future conduct of his men.
"After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected
captain-general by a document which he compelled all his companions
to sign. He afterward sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy
the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with
him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received
him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire,
although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the
ends of which were armed with spikes.
"Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means.
He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with
Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this
proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they,
upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of
the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to
that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his
people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French
soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company, offering to each a
sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this assistance
he might easily compass his design. His letters, which were without
effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of
their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four
others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused
him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took
Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who
escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the
attack, but with little success.
"Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate Sardam. As
he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a
circumstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived
by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw
himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded
to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came
alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four,
informed him of the massacre, and advised him to return as speedily
as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to
surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to
attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning
been at close quarters with them. Pelsart perceived at the time the
two shallops coming toward him, and had scarcely got on board his
vessel before they came alongside.
"He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold
and silver, and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they
approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him
when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into
the sea or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled
to submit, they threw away their weapons, and, being ordered on
board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de
Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or assisted in the
assassination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays
brought his prisoner on board.
"On September 18th the captain and the master pilot, taking with them
ten men of Weybehays' company, passed over in boats to the island of
Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon
as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons."
Pelsart remained another week at the Abrolhos, endeavoring to recover
some of the Batavia's treasure, and succeeded in finding all but one
chest. The mutineers were tried by the officers of the Sardam, and all
but two were executed before the ship left the scene of their awful
crime. The two men who were not hanged were put on shore on the mainland,
and were probably the first Europeans to end their lives upon the
continent. Dutch vessels for many years afterward sought for traces of
the marooned seamen, but none was ever discovered.
The 1644 voyage of Tasman was made expressly for the purpose of exploring
the north and northwestern shores of the continent, and to prove the
existence or otherwise of straits separating it from New Guinea. Tasman's
instructions show this, and prove that while the existence of the straits
was suspected, and although Torres had unconsciously passed through them,
they were not known. Tasman explored a long length of coast line,
establishing its continuity from the extreme northwestern point, Arnhem
Land, as far as the twenty-second degree of south latitude, Exmouth Gulf.
He failed to prove the existence of Torres Straits; but to him, it is
generally agreed, is due the discovery and naming of the Gulf of
Carpentaria--Carpenter, in Tasman's time, being president at Amsterdam of
the Dutch East India Company--and the naming of a part of North
Australia, as he had previously named the island to the south, after Van
Diemen. From this voyage dates the name "New Holland." The great stretch
of coast lines embracing his discoveries became known to his countrymen
as Hollandia Nova, a name which, in its English form, was adopted for the
whole continent, and remained until it was succeeded by the more
euphonious name of Australia. Tasman continued doing good service for the
Dutch East India Company until his death, about 1659, at Batavia.
SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA
CHARTER UNDER WHICH AMERICA WAS COLONIZED
A.D. 1607
R. R. HOWISON
As the first of the original English colonies in North America,
Virginia enjoys a primacy in our history which, however other
sectional claims may be contested, is beyond dispute. The name
Virginia, which in 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh gave to his settlement on
the Carolina coast, at first covered an indefinite extent of the
great central territory of the continent.
After the failure and disappearance of Raleigh's colony, no further
attempts were made to settle the region until 1606, when new interest
in American colonization had been aroused in England. The credit for
awakening this interest is given to Bartholomew Gosnold, an English
navigator who, in 1602, sailed directly west and in May reached Cape
Cod. Then, coasting along New England, he found and named Martha's
Vineyard, and in July returned to England.
English adventurers were so much impressed with his enthusiastic
reports and his arguments in favor of new endeavors to occupy western
lands, that they began to urge a fresh undertaking. Gosnold's views
were strongly supported by the geographer Richard Hakluyt, "to whom
America owes a heavy debt of gratitude." There were numerous offers
of money and service, and when application was made to King James I
he was quite ready to sanction the project. He is said to have
thought of the profits that might return to him and also of the
satisfaction to be found in being rid of the "turbulent spirits" sure
to be drawn into the enterprise.
On April 10, 1606, James I issued a patent to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir
George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, and others with them associated, under
which they proposed to embark upon their eagerly sought scheme. This
royal grant deserves our close attention, as it will explain the nature
of the enterprise and the powers originally enjoyed by those who entered
upon it.