_Letter of Supercargo Cornelis Buysero at Bantam to the Managers of the
East India Company at Amsterdam._
Worshipful, Wise, Provident, very Discreet Gentlemen,...
...The ship Eendracht [*], with which they had sailed from the
Netherlands, after communicating at the Cabo sailed away from them so
far southward as to come upon 6 various islands which were, however,
found uninhabited [**]...
[* Commanded by Dirk Hartogs, or Hartogszoon.]
[* What "uninhabited islands" the ship Eendracht "came upon", Buysero's
letter does not say. Various authentic archival documents of 1618 and
subsequent years, however, go to show that the land afterwards named
Eendrachtsland or Land van de Eendracht, and the Dirk Hartogsreede
(island) must have been discovered on this voyage.]
Bantam, this last day of August, A.D. 1617.
Your Worships' servant to command
CORNELIS BUYSERO [*]
[* Buysero was supercargo at Bantam (DE JONGE, Opkcornst, IV, p. 68,) and
was therefore likely to be well informed as to the adventures of the
ship, which had sailed from the Netherlands in January 1616, departed
from the Cape of Good Hope in the last days of August, and had arrived in
India in December of the same year, as appears from what Steven Van der
Haghen, Governor of Amboyna, writes May 26, 1617: "That in the month of
December 1616, the ship Eendracht entered the narrows between Bima and
the land of Endea near Guno Api (Goenoeng Api) in the south of Java"
(Sapi Straits).]