The general name of New Holland has been given to a great extent of continent, or chain of islands, reaching from 6° to 34° south lat. between 105° and 140° east longitude from Paris. It was reasonable to give it the name of New Holland, because the different parts of it have chiefly been discovered by Dutch navigators. The first land which was found in these parts, was called the Land of Eendraght, from the person[[5]] that discovered it in 1616, in 24° and 25° south latitude. In 1618, another part of this coast, situated nearly in 15° south, was discovered by Zeachen, who gave it the name of Arnhem and Diemen; though this is not the same with that which Tasman called Diemen’s land afterwards. In 1619, Jan van Edels gave his name to a southern part of New Holland. Another part, situated between 30° and 33°, received the name of Leuwen. Peter van Nuitz communicated his name in 1627 to a coast which makes as it were a continuation of Leuwen’s land to the westward. William de Witts called a part of the western coast, near the tropic of Capricorn, after his own name, though it should have born that of captain Viane, a Dutchman, who paid dear for the discovery of this coast in 1628, by the loss of his ship, and of all his riches.
In the same year 1628, Peter Carpenter, a Dutchman, discovered the great Gulph of Carpentaria, between 10° and 20° south latitude, and the Dutch have often since sent ships to reconnoitre that coast.
Dampier, an Englishman, setting out from the great Timor Isle, made his first voyage in 1687, along the coasts of New Holland; and touched between the land of Arnhem and of Diemen: this short expedition was productive of no discovery. In 1699 he left England, with an express intention of visiting all that region, concerning which, the Dutch would not publish the accounts they had of it. He sailed along the western coast of it, from 28° to 15°. He saw the land of Eendraght, and of De Witt, and conjectured that there might exist a passage to the south of Carpentaria. He then returned to Timor, from whence he went out again, examined the Isles of Papua, coasted New Guinea, discovered the passage that bears his name, called a great isle which forms this passage or strait on the east side, New Britain, and sailed back to Timor along New Guinea. This is the same Dampier who between 1683 and 1691, partly as a free-booter or privateer, and partly as a trader, sailed round the world, by changing his ships.
This is the short abstract of the several voyages round the world, and of the various discoveries made in that vast Pacific Ocean before our departure from France[[6]]. Before I begin the narrative of the expedition, with which I was charged, I must beg leave to mention, that this relation ought not to be looked upon as a work of amusement; it has chiefly been written for seamen. Besides, this long navigation round the globe does not offer such striking and interesting scenes to the polite world, as a voyage made in time of war. Happy, if by being used to composition, I could have learnt to counterbalance, the dulness of the subject by elegance of stile! But, though I was acquainted with the sciences from my very youth, when the lessons which M. d’Alembert was so kind to give me, enabled me to offer to the indulgent public, a work upon geometry, yet I am now far from the sanctuary of science and learning; the rambling and savage life I have led for these twelve years past, have had too great an effect upon my ideas and my stile. One does not become a good writer in the woods of Canada, or on the seas, and I have lost a brother, whose productions were admired by the public, and who might have assisted me in that respect.
Lastly, I neither quote nor contradict any body, and much less do I pretend to establish or to overthrow any hypothesis; and supposing that the great differences which I have remarked in the various countries where I have touched at, had not been able to prevent my embracing that spirit of system-making, so peculiar in our present age, and however so incompatible with true philosophy, how could I have expected that my whim, whatever appearance of probability I could give it, should meet with success in the world? I am a voyager and a seaman; that is, a liar and a stupid fellow, in the eyes of that class of indolent haughty writers, who in their closets reason in infinitum on the world and its inhabitants, and with an air of superiority, confine nature within the limits of their own invention. This way of proceeding appears very singular and inconceivable, on the part of persons who have observed nothing themselves, and only write and reason upon the observations which they have borrowed from those same travellers in whom they deny the faculty of seeing and thinking.
I shall conclude this preliminary discourse by doing justice to the zeal, courage, and unwearied patience of the officers and crew of my two ships[[7]]. It has not been necessary to animate them by any extraordinary incitement, such as the English thought it necessary to grant to the crew of commodore Byron. Their constancy has stood the test of the most critical situations, and their good will has not one moment abated. But the French nation is capable of conquering the greatest difficulties, and nothing is impossible to their efforts, as often as she will think herself equal at least to any nation in the world[[8]].
CHART
shewing the Track round
the World
of the
Boudeuse and Etoile
under the Command
OF
M. de Bougainville
1766-1769