Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia: / A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.

by Richard Henry Major

This fragment of description is meagre enough; but it is all that we can boast of possessing. It is further remarkable that those who have spoken of the part of the coast visited by Tasman in this voyage, have led their readers into a misconception by attributing the discovery of the Gulf of Carpentaria to Carpenter, and of the northern Van Diemen’s Land to the governor so named. So soon after the voyage as the year 1663, we find Thevenot printing as follows: “We shall, in due course, give the voyages of Carpenter and Diemen, to whom is due the principal honour of this discovery. Van Diemen brought back gold, porcelain, and a thousand other articles of wealth; which at first gave rise to the notion that the country produced all these things: though it has been since ascertained that what he brought was recovered from a vessel which had been wrecked on these coasts. The mystery which the Dutch make of the matter, and the difficulties thrown in the way of publishing what is known about it, suggest the idea that the country is rich. But why should they shew such jealousy with respect to a country which produces nothing deserving so distant a journey?” La Neuville also, in his Histoire de Hollande (Paris, 1703, tom. ii, p. 213), speaking of Van Diemen, says: “This latter not only examined the coasts of this great land, but had two years previously sailed as far as 43 degrees towards the antarctic pole, and discovered, on the 24th of November 1642, a new country in the other continent, which now bears the name of Van Diemen’s Land.” Here the very details clearly expose the nature of the mistake, since the maps and the instructions to Tasman shew his second voyage to have been in 1644, and the discovery of Van Diemen’s Land in 1642 is known to be his beyond all dispute. The fact is moreover confirmed by the identity of the names given to the tracts discovered in these two voyages, viz. those of the principal members of the council and of Marie van Diemen, to whom Tasman is supposed to have been attached.

Prévost, in his Histoire des Voyages (Paris, 1753, tom. ii, p. 201), says that Carpentaria was discovered by Carpenter in 1662. We then find De Brosses correcting this statement (p. 433) by saying, “the Abbé Prevost ought not to have stated that, in 1662, Carpentaria was discovered by Pieter Carpenter, since he was Governor-General of the Company of the Indies, and returned to Europe in June 1628 with five vessels richly laden.” He then quotes the above passage from Thevenot, and continues: “Unfortunately Thevenot has not fulfilled his promise respecting Carpentaria. That learned collector was engaged in preparing, at the time of his decease, a fifth volume of his collection, of which some incomplete portions of what he had already published were found in his cabinet. From amongst these I have extracted the journal of Captain Tasman, who discovered Van Diemen’s Land. There was, however, nothing respecting the voyage of Captain Carpenter, nor that of the Governor-General, Van Diemen, even if he had left one: at least, if the manuscripts of these voyages were there originally, it is not known what has become of them.” De Brosses concludes by saying that his researches in private collections and in printed geographical works had been unsuccessful in procuring further information on the subject. Subsequent geographers continued to attribute to Carpenter the discovery of Carpentaria, and many of them to Van Diemen the discovery of the north Van Diemen’s Land. In Dubois’ work, Vies des Gouverneurs Généraux, already quoted, which was compiled in Holland from the manuscript journals and registers from Batavia, he says expressly, p. 82, in speaking of Carpenter, who was governor between 1623 and 1627: “Some writers attribute to him personally the honour of the discovery of Carpentaria, the southern land lying between New Guinea and New Holland; but this is without any apparent foundation, inasmuch as they fix this discovery in the year 1628, in which year he returned to Holland, on the 12th of June, with five vessels richly laden, having sailed from Batavia on the 12th of November of the previous year.” It should, moreover, be observed, that no evidence has been adduced of his having been on the coast at all, while there is every reason to believe that the exploration of the Gulf of Carpentaria was not only “achevé,” as M. Eyriès suggests (p. 12, art. 1, vol. ii, of Nouvelles Annales des Voyages), by Tasman in 1644, but accomplished by that navigator for the first time. It might then be asked how comes it that Tasman, who had in both his voyages so largely complimented the governor Van Diemen, by giving his name and that of his daughter Maria, to whom he was attached, to various points of his discovery, should finally give the name of Carpenter to an important gulf and tract of country, when the governor bearing that name had left Batavia sixteen years before? The answer is readily given. The Governor and Company of Batavia formed a local administration under the presidency of the Company of the Indies at Amsterdam, which latter consisted of seventeen delegates from the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. In the year 1623, in which Carpenter commenced his governorship in the east, an event occurred in Amboina which threatened to produce a war between Holland and England. Some English officials, in concert with some Japanese soldiers, had formed a conspiracy to kill the Dutch in the island and to gain possession of the fortress. The conspiracy was discovered, and the governor had the conspirators put to death. In England the governor’s conduct was regarded as a piece of heartless cruelty. Mutual recriminations ensued, and for several years a contest between the two countries was imminent. After Carpenter’s return to Holland in 1628, he was sent out as one of a deputation to London on this subject despatched in the year 1629. He was also appointed president of the Company of the Indies in Amsterdam, which post he occupied till his death in 1659. It need, therefore, no longer be subject of surprise that Tasman should have given the name of Carpenter, the president of the Home Company of the Indies, to an extensive country and gulf discovered by him in 1644.

We cannot dismiss our notice of this important voyage, which thus gave the name of New Holland to the great South Land, without quoting the remark of Thevenot in the Relation de l’estat présent des Indes, prefixed to the second volume of his Relation de Divers Voyages Curieux. He says: “The Dutch pretend to have a right to the southern land which they have discovered.... They maintain that these coasts were never known by the Portuguese or the other nations of Europe.... It is to be noticed that all this extent of country falls within the line of demarcation of the Dutch East India Company, if we are to believe their maps, and that this motive of interest has perhaps made them give a false position to New Zealand, lest it should fall within the line of demarcation of the Dutch West India Company; for these two companies are as jealous of each other, as they are of the other nations of Europe.... It is to be observed, that although the Portuguese possess many places in the Indies, they are extremely weak, by reason that their enemies are masters of these seas and of the traffic which they themselves formerly possessed.”

The observation would seem to imply that Thevenot, a Frenchman, was not wanting in the belief that these coasts had really been discovered by the Portuguese before they were visited by the Dutch, while it passes by in silence any thought of a claim thereto on the part of his own countrymen, a point worth noticing in connexion with the evidence of the early French manuscript maps of which we have already so fully treated.

From the voyage of Tasman to the close of the seventeenth century, it is probable that a considerable number of voyages were made to the west coasts of New Holland, of which no account has ever been printed. By the obliging and intelligent assistance of Mr. Frederick Müller, of Amsterdam, (a rare example of a bookseller who interests himself not only in obtaining curious early books illustrative of the history of his country, but in minutely studying that history himself), the editor has been enabled to procure some documents from the Hague, which have never before been printed, and one which, although in print, has become exceedingly scarce, and has never before been rendered into English.

The earliest of these is an account of the ship De Vergulde Draeck, on the Southland, and the expedition undertaken both from Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope in search of the survivors, etc., drawn up and translated from authentic MS. copies of the logbooks in the Royal Archives at the Hague. De Vergulde Draeck, which set sail from the Texel in October 1655, was wrecked on a reef on the west coast, in latitude 30 degrees, 40 minutes, and a hundred and eighteen souls were lost. The news was brought to Batavia by one of the ship’s boats, sixty-eight of the survivors having remained behind, exerting themselves to get their boat afloat again, that they might send some more of their number to Batavia. The Governor General immediately dispatched the flyboat the Witte Vaclk, and the yacht the Goede Hoop, to the assistance of those men, and also to help in the rescue of the specie and merchandize lost in the Vergulde Draeck. This expedition was attended with bad success, as they reached the coast in the winter time. Similar ill luck attended the flyboat Vinck, which was directed to touch at New Holland, in its voyage from the Cape to Batavia in 1657, to search for the unfortunate men who had been left behind. The company next dispatched from Batavia two galliots, the Waeckende Boey, and the Emeloort, on the 1st of January, 1658. These vessels also returned to Batavia in April of the same year, having each of them separated, after parting company by the way, sailed backwards and forwards again and again, and landed parties at several points along the coast. They had also continually fired signal guns night and day, without, however, discovering either any Dutchmen, or the wreck of the vessel. The only things seen were some few planks and blocks, with a piece of the mast, a taffrail, fragments of barrels, and other objects scattered here and there along the coast, and supposed to be remnants of the wreck. This account, with a description of the west coast of the South Land, by the Captain Samuel Volkersen, of the Pink Waeckende Boey, is accompanied by copies of original charts, showing the coast visited by this vessel and the Emeloort, never before printed. These documents are followed by an extract from the Burgomaster Witsen’s Noord en Oost Tartarye, descriptive of the west coast, a portion of which is plainly derived from the account of Abraham Leeman, the mate of the Waeckende Boey.

We must not here omit to mention, that in the year 1693, appeared a work bearing the following title: Les Avantures de Jaques Sadeur dans la découverte et le voyage de la Terre Australe, contenant les coutumes et les mœurs des Australiens, leur religion, leurs exercises, leurs études, leurs guerres, leurs animaux, particuliers à ce pays et toutes les raretez curieuses qui s’y trouvent. À Paris, chez Claude Barbin, au Palais, sur le second perron de la Sainte Chapelle, 1693. In the Vannes edition, p. 3, the author’s Christian name is given Nicolas. An English translation appeared in the same year, entitled “A new discovery of Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World, by James Sadeur, a Frenchman, who, being cast there by a shipwreck, lived thirty-five years in that country, and gives a particular description of the manners, customs, religion, laws, studies and wars of those southern people, and of some animals peculiar to that place, with several other rarities. These memoirs were thought so curious, that they were kept secret in the closet of a late great minister of state, and never published till now, since his death. Translated from the French copy printed at Paris by publick authority, April 8. Imprimatur, Charles Hern, London. Printed for John Dunton, at the Raven, in the Poultry, 1693.” The work is purely fictitious throughout.

The next Dutch voyage of which we have succeeded in finding an account, is that of Willem de Vlamingh, in 1696, which also owed its origin to the loss of a ship, the Ridderschap van Hollandt. This vessel had been missing from the time she had left the Cape of Good Hope in 1684 or 1685, and it was thought probable she might have been wrecked upon the great South Land, and that some of the crew might, even after this lapse of time, be still living. The commodore, Willem de Vlaming, who was going out to India with the Geelvink, Nyptang, and Wezel, was, therefore, ordered to make a search for them. The account of this voyage, which was printed at Amsterdam in 1701, 4to, is exceedingly scarce; and after many years enquiry, the editor deemed himself fortunate in procuring it through the medium of Mr. Müller, of Amsterdam, and a translation of it is here given. The search of De Vlaming was, however, fruitless, and the two principal points of interest were the finding of the plate already described, with the inscription commemorating the arrival and departure of Dirk Hartog, in 1616, and the discovery of Swan River, where the embodiment of the poet’s notion of a rara avis in terris was for the first time encountered, and two of the black swans were taken alive to Batavia.

Meanwhile, the shores of New Holland had been visited by a countryman of our own, the celebrated Dampier. In the buccaneering expedition in which he made a voyage round the world, he came upon the north-west coast in 16 degrees, 50 minutes due south from a shoal, whose longitude is now known to be 122¼ degrees east. Running along the shore N.E. by E., twelve leagues to a bay or opening convenient for landing, a party was sent ashore to search for water, and surprised some of the natives, some of whom they tried to induce to help in filling the water casks, and conveying them to the boat. “But all the signs we could make,” says Dampier, “were to no purpose; for they stood like statues, staring at one another, and grinning like so many monkeys. These poor creatures seem not accustomed to carry burdens; and I believe one of our ship’s boys, of ten years old, would carry as much as one of their men.” In his description of the natives, he agrees with Tasman in their being “a naked black people, with curly hair, like that of the negroes in Guinea; but he mentions other circumstances which are not mentioned in the note from Tasman.” He describes them as “the most miserable people in the world. The Hottentots compared with them are gentlemen. They have no houses, animals, or poultry; their persons are tall, straight bodied, thin, with long limbs; they have great heads, round foreheads, and great brows; their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the flies out of their eyes, for they are so troublesome here, that no fanning will keep them from one’s face; so that, from their infancy, they never open their eyes as other people do, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads as if they were looking at something over them. They have great bottle noses, full lips, wide mouths; the two fore teeth of the upper jaw are wanting in all of them; neither have they any beard. Their hair is short, black and curled, and their skins coal black, like that of the negroes in Guinea. Their only food is fish, and they consequently search for them at low water; and they make little weirs or dams with stones across little coves of the sea. At one time, our boat being among the islands, seeking for game, espied a drove of these people swimming from one island to another, for they have neither boats, canoes, nor bark logs.” Dampier remained there from January 5 to March 12, 1688, but is silent as to any dangers upon the twelve leagues of coast seen by him.

In the year 1699, Great Britain being at peace with the other maritime states of Europe, king William ordered an expedition for the discovery of new countries, and for the examination of some of those already discovered, particularly New Holland and New Guinea. Dampier’s graphic narrative of his buccaneering voyages caused the Earl of Pembroke to select him to conduct the expedition. The Roebuck, a ship belonging to the royal navy, was equipped for the purpose. After a voyage of six months, Dampier struck soundings in the night of August 1st, 1699, upon the northern part of the Abrolhos shoal, in latitude about 27 degrees, 40 minutes S. Next morning he saw the main coast, and ran northward along it, discovering in 26 degrees, 10 minutes, an opening two leagues wide, but full of rocks and foul ground. August 6th, he anchored in Dirk Hartog’s Road, at the entrance of a sound which he named Shark’s Bay: where he remained eight days examining the sound, cutting wood upon the islands, fishing, etc., and gives a description of what was seen in his usual circumstantial manner. His description of the kangaroo, probably the first ever given of that singular animal, is a curious one. “The land animals we saw here were only a sort of raccoons, but different from those of the West Indies, chiefly as to their legs; for these have very short forelegs, but go jumping, and like the raccoons are very good meat.”