[** See p. [37] below.]
[*** As regards this, see especially the chart on p. [46].--Cf. my Life of Tasman, pp. 99-100.]
In the course of the same expedition discovery was also made of Arnhemsland on the west-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and almost certainly also of the so-called Groote Eyland or Van der Lijns island (Van Speultsland) [*] The whole of the southern part of the gulf remained, however, unvisited.
[* See my Life of Tasman, pp. 101-102; and pp. [47-48] below.]
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The honour of having first explored this part of the gulf in his second famous voyage of 1644 is due to our countryman Abel Janszoon Tasman together with Frans Jacobszoon Visscher and his other courageous coadjutors in the ships Limmen Zeemeeuw and Brak. [*] Abel Tasman's passagie [course] of 1644 lay again along the south-west coast of New Guinea; again also Tasman left unsolved the problem of the passage through between New Guinea and Australia: Torres Strait was again mistaken for a bay. The east-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria was next further explored, and various new names were conferred especially on rivers on this coast, which most probably got the name of Carpentaria about this time; of the names then given a great many continue to figure in modern maps. After exploring the east-coast, Tasman turned to the south-coast of the gulf. In this latter case the results of the exploration proved to be less trustworthy afterwards. Thus Tasman mistook for a portion of the mainland the island now known as Mornington Island; the same mistake he made as regards Maria Eiland in Limmensbocht. For the rest however, the coast-line also of the south-coast was delineated with what we must call great accuracy if we keep in mind the defective instruments with which the navigators of the middle of the seventeenth century had to make shift. The west-coast of the gulf, too, was skirted and surveyed in this voyage; Tasman passed between this coast and the Groote (Van der Lijn's) eiland.
[* See my Life of Tasman, pp. 115-118, and especially chart No. I of the Tasman Folio. Much information may also be gathered from [chart No. 14] of the present work, since it registers almost the whole amount of Dutch knowledge about Australia circa 1700.]
The entire coastline enclosing the Gulf of Carpentaria had accordingly now been skirted and mapped out. The value of Tasman's discoveries in this part of Australia directly appears, if we lay side by side, for instance, the chart of the upper-steersman De Leeuw [*], who formed part of the voyage of 1623, or Keppler's map of 1630 [**]; and Tasman's chart of 1644 [***], or Isaac De Graaff's made about 1700 [****], which last gives a pretty satisfactory survey of the results of Tasman's voyage of 1644 so far as the Gulf of Carpentaria is concerned. Although Tasman's expedition of 1644 did not yield complete information respecting the coast-line of the Gulf, and although it is easy to point out inaccuracies, the additions made by this voyage to our knowledge on this point are so considerable that we may say with complete justice that while the discovery of the east-coast of the Gulf is due to Jansz. (1606) and Carstensz. (1623), it was Tasman who made known the south-coast and the greater part of the west-coast.
[* No. 7 on p. [46].]
[** No. 6 on p. [10].]