The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

The voyage was then continued, but nowhere could the ships find a safe bay in which they might drop anchor. Everywhere the coast appeared to be dangerous. The surf was high, and the wind blew hard. At last, on the eighteenth of December, after another long voyage across the open sea, more land was seen. This time the coast was even more dangerous than it had been in Tasmania and the land was covered with high mountains. Furthermore the Hollanders had to deal with a new sort of native, much more savage and more able to defend themselves than those who had looked at the two ships from the safe distance of Van Diemen's Land, but had fled whenever the white man tried to come near their shore.

At first the natives of this new land rowed out to the Heemskerk and the Zeehaen and paddled around the ships without doing any harm. But one day the boat of the Zeehaen tried to return their visit. It was at once attacked by the ferocious natives. Three Dutch sailors were killed with clubs, and several were wounded with spears. Not until after the Heemskerk had fired a volley and had sunk a number of canoes did the others flee and leave the Dutch boat alone. The wounded men were taken on board, where several of them died next day. Tasman did not dare to risk a further investigation of this bay with his small vessels, and after the loss of several of his small company he departed. The place of disaster he called Tasman Bay, and sailed farther toward the north. If he had gone a few miles to the east, he would have discovered that this was not a bay at all but the strait which divides the northern and southern part of New Zealand. Now it is called Cook Strait after the famous British sailor who a century later explored that part of the world and who found that New Zealand is not part of a continent, but a large island which offered a splendid chance for a settlement. It was very fertile, and the natives had reached a much higher degree of civilization than those of the Australian continent. Cook made another interesting discovery. The natives who had seen the first appearance of the white man had been so deeply impressed by the arrival of the two Dutch ships that they turned their mysterious appearance into a myth. This myth had grown in size and importance with each new generation, and when Captain Cook dropped anchor off the coast of New Zealand and established relations with the natives, the latter told him a wonderful story of two gigantic vessels which had come to their island ever so long ago, and which had been destroyed by their ancestors while all the men on board had been killed.

It is not easy to follow Tasman on the modern map. After leaving Cook Strait he went northward, and passing between the most northern point of the island, which he called Cape Maria van Diemen, and a small island which, because it was discovered on the sixth of January, was called the "Three Kings Island," he reached open water once more.

He now took his course due north in the hope of reaching some of the islands which Le Maire had discovered. Instead of that, on the nineteenth of January, the two ships found several islands of the Tonga group, also called the Friendly Islands. They baptized these with names of local Dutch celebrities and famous men in the nautical world of Holland. Near one of them, called Amsterdam, because it looked a little more promising than any of the others, the ships stopped, and once more an attempt was made to establish amicable relations with the natives. These came rowing out to the ship, and whenever anything was thrown overboard they dived after it and showed an ability to swim and to remain under water which ever since has been connected with the idea of the South Sea population. By means of signs and after all sorts of presents, such as little mirrors and nails and small knives, had been thrown overboard to be fished up by the natives, Tasman got into communication with the Tonga people. He showed them a mean, thin chicken and pointed to his stomach. The natives understood this and brought him fresh food. He showed an empty glass and went through the motion of drinking. The natives pointed to the land and showed him by signs that they knew what was wanted, and that there was fresh water to be obtained on shore.

Gradually the natives lost their fear and climbed on board. In exchange for the cocoanuts which they brought they received a plentiful supply of old rusty nails. When those on shore heard that the millennium of useful metal had come sailing into their harbor, their eagerness to get their own share was so great that hundreds of them came swimming out to the Dutch vessels to offer their wares before the supply of nails should be exhausted. Tasman himself went on land, and the relations between native and visitor were so pleasant that the first appearance of the white man became the subject of a Tonga epic which was still recited among the natives when the next European ship landed here a century and a quarter later.

Going from island to island and everywhere meeting with the same sort of long-haired, vigorous-looking men, Tasman now sailed in a south-western direction. He spent several weeks between the Fiji Islands and the group now called Samoa. During all this time his ships were in grave danger of running upon the hidden reefs which are plentiful in this part of the Pacific. At last the winter began to approach and the weather grew more and more unstable, and as the ships after their long voyage were in need of a safe harbor and repair, it was decided to try and return within the confines of the map of the known and explored world. Accordingly the ships sailed westward and discovered several islands of the Solomon group, sailed through the Bismarck Archipelago, as it is called now, and after several months reached the northern part of New Guinea, which they, too, supposed to be the northern coast of the large continent of which they had touched the shores at so many spots, but which instead of the promised Ophir was a dreary, flat land surrounded by little islands full of cocoanuts, natives, and palm-trees, but without a scrap of either gold or silver.

Tasman then found himself in well-known regions. He made straightway for Batavia, and on the fifteenth of June of the year 1644 he landed to report his adventures to the governor-general and the council of the Indian Company. A few months later he was sent out upon a new expedition, this time with three ships. He made a detailed investigation of the northern coast of the real Australian continent. He sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria. He found the Torres Strait, which he supposed to be a bay between New Guinea and Australia,—for the report of the Torres discovery in 1607 was as yet in the dusty archives of Manila, and had not been given to the world,—and once more he returned by way of the western coast of New Guinea to inform the governor-general that whatever continent he had found produced nothing which could be of any material profit to the Dutch East India Company. In short, New Holland, as Australia was then called, was not settled by the Hollanders because it had no immediate commercial value. After this last voyage no further expeditions were sent out to look for the supposed Southern Continent. From the reports of several ships which had reached the west coast of Australia and from the information brought home by Tasman it was decided that whatever land there might still be hidden between the 110 and 111 degree of longitude, offered no inducements to a respectable trading company which looked for gold and silver and spices, but had no use for kangaroos and the duck-billed platypus. New Holland was left alone until the growing population of the European continent drove other nations to explore this part of the world once more a hundred and twenty years later.