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.

You have kindly permitted me to dedicate to you this result of my investigations respecting the early explorations of Australia. To none can a book on such a subject be more appropriately offered than to yourself. To you geographers are pre-eminently indebted for the promotion of Australian exploration in recent times, while your ever-memorable scientific anticipation of the discovery of the Australian gold fields must connect your name inseparably with the history of a country, whose future greatness can be foreseen, but cannot be estimated.

I remain, Dear SIR RODERICK, With much respect, Yours very faithfully, R. H. MAJOR.

British Museum, August, 1859.

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CONTENTS.

A MEMORIAL ADDRESSED TO HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY PHILIP THE THIRD, KING OF SPAIN, by Dr. Juan Luis Arias, respecting the exploration, colonization, and conversion of the Southern Land, translated from the Spanish original 1

RELATION OF LUIS VAEZ DE TORRES, concerning the discoveries of QUIROS, as his Almirante. Dated Manila, July 12, 1607. A translation, nearly literal, by Alexander Dalrymple, Esq., from a Spanish manuscript copy in his possession, reprinted from App. to vol. ii of Burney’s “Discoveries in the South Sea” 31

EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF DISPATCHES FROM BATAVIA; commencing January the 15th, 1644, and ending November the 29th following, reprinted from Dalrymple’s “Collections Concerning Papua” 43

THE VOYAGE AND SHIPWRECK OF CAPTAIN FRANCIS PELSART, in the “Batavia,” on the coast of New Holland, and his succeeding adventures, translated from Thevenot’s “Recueil de Voyages Curieux” 59

VOYAGE OF GERRIT THOMASZ POOL TO THE SOUTH LAND. Translated from Valentyn’s “Beschryvingh van Banda” 75

ACCOUNT OF THE WRECK OF THE SHIP “DE VERGULDE DRAECK” ON THE SOUTH LAND, and the expeditions undertaken, both from Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope, in search of the survivors and money and goods which might be found on the wreck, and of the small success which attended them. Extracted from MS. documents at the Hague, and translated from the Dutch 77

DESCRIPTION OF THE WEST COAST OF THE SOUTH LAND, by Captain Samuel Volkersen, of the pink “Waeckende Boey,” which sailed from Batavia on the 1st of January 1658, and returned on the 19th of April of the same year. Extracted from MS. Documents at the Hague and translated from the Dutch 89

EXTRACT TRANSLATED FROM BURGOMASTER WITSEN’S “Noord en Oost Tartarye” 91

ACCOUNT OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF CAPTAIN WILLIAM DAMPIER on the coast of New Holland, in 1687–88, being an extract from his “New Voyage round the World” 99

EXTRACT FROM SLOAN MS., 3236, entitled “The Adventures of William Dampier, with others [1686–87], who left Captain Sherpe in the South Seas, and travaled back over land through the country of Darien” 108

SOME PARTICULARS RELATING TO THE VOYAGE OF WILLEM DE VLAMINGH to New Holland in 1696. Extracted from MS. Documents at the Hague and translated from the Dutch 112

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE MADE TO THE UNEXPLORED SOUTH LAND, by order of the Dutch East India Company, in the years 1696 and 1697, by the hooker “De Nyptang,” the ship “De Geelvink,” and the galiot “De Wesel,” and the return to Batavia. From MS. Documents at the Hague: translated from the Dutch 120

ACCOUNT OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF CAPTAIN WILLIAM DAMPIER on the coast of New Holland, in 1699, being an extract from “a Voyage to New Holland, etc., in the year 1699” 134

A WRITTEN DETAIL OF THE DISCOVERIES AND NOTICEABLE OCCURRENCES in the voyage of the fluyt “Vossenbosch,” the sloop “D’Waijer,” and the patsjallang “Nova Hollandia,” despatched by the government of India, anno 1705, from Batavia by way of Timor to New Holland. From MS. Documents at the Hague: translated from the Dutch 165

THE HOUTMAN’S ABROLHOS in 1727, translated from a publication entitled “De Houtman’s Abrolhos,” by Captain P. A. Leupe, of the Dutch Navy 176

INSTRUCTIONS TO THE BINDER.

The Maps to be placed in the following order.

Jave la Grande to face page xxvii.

The Londe of Java to face page xxix.

Tasman’s Track to face page xcvii.

Coast visited by the Waeckende Boey and Emeloort, two maps to face page 81.

Terra Australis to face page 200.

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INTRODUCTION.

When, at a period comparatively recent in the world’s history, the discovery was made that, on the face of the as yet unmeasured ocean, there existed a western continent which rivalled in extent the world already known, it became a subject of natural enquiry whether a fact of such momentous importance could for so many thousands of years have remained a secret. Nor was the enquiry entirely without response. Amid the obscurity of the past some faint foreshadowings of the great reality appeared to be traceable. The poet with his prophecy, the sage with his mythic lore, and the unlettered seaman who, with curious eye, had peered into the mysteries of the far-stretching Atlantic, had each, as it now appeared, enunciated a problem which at length had met with its solution.[1]

In these later days, when the enquiry has assumed gigantic proportions, and the facilities of investigation have been simultaneously increased, much has been done towards bringing to light the evidence of various ascertained or possible visitations from the Old World to the New, which had previously remained unknown. A summary of them has already been laid before the members of the Hakluyt Society by the editor of the present volume, in his introduction to the “Select Letters of Columbus”, and requires no repetition here.

Of the future results of that momentous discovery, what human intelligence can foresee the climax? Already the northern half of that vast portion of the globe is mainly occupied by a section of the Anglo-Saxon family, earnest and active in the development of its native energies; and among these, again, are many who look back with eager curiosity to every yet minuter particular respecting the early history of their adopted country.

A new field of colonization, second only to that of America, and constituting, as far as is at present known, the largest island in our globe, has in far more recent times been opened up by a slow and gradual progress to a branch of the same expansive family. A future but little inferior in importance may, without much imaginative speculation, be assigned to them, and from them likewise may be reasonably expected the most curious inquiry as to the earliest discoveries by their predecessors of a land so vast in its dimensions, so important in its characteristics, and yet so little known or reasoned upon by the numerous generations of mankind that had passed away before them.

In endeavouring to meet this demand it must be premised, that while the main object proposed in this volume is to treat of the early indications of the island now recognized as Australia, anterior to the time of Captain Cook, it is impossible to deal with the real or supposed discoveries which may have taken place prior to that date, without referring at the same time to the discovery of the adjacent island of New Guinea and of the great southern continent, of both of which what we now call Australia was in those times regarded as forming a part. The investigation is one of the most interesting character in all its stages, but beset with doubts and difficulties arising from a variety of causes.

The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity; that in the sixteenth century (the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries) there are indications on maps of the great probability of Australia having been already discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documents immediately describing these voyages have not been found.

That, in so far as regards the Portuguese, this obscurity is mainly due to a jealous apprehension lest lands of large extent and great importance in the southern seas might fall into the hands of rival powers to their own displacement or prejudice, may not only be suspected, but seems to be affirmable from historical evidence.

It is stated by Humboldt (Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent, tom. iv, p. 70), upon the authority of the letters of Angelo Trevigiano, secretary to Domenico Pisani, ambassador from Venice to Spain, that the kings of Portugal forbad upon pain of death the exportation of any marine chart which showed the course to Calicut. We find also in Ramusio (Discorso sopra el libro di Odoardo Barbosa, and the Sommario delle Indie Orientali, tom. i, p. 287.b) a similar prohibition implied. He says that these books “were for many years concealed and not allowed to be published, for convenient reasons that I must not now describe.” He also speaks of the great difficulty he himself had in procuring a copy, and even that an imperfect one, from Lisbon. “Tanto possono,” he says, “gli interessi del principe.” Again, in tom. iii of the same collection, in the account of the “Discorso d’un gran Capitano del Mare Francese del luogo di Dieppa,” etc., now known to be the voyage of Jean Parmentier to Sumatra in 1529, and in all probability written by his companion and eulogist the poet Pierre Crignon, the covetousness and exclusiveness of the Portuguese are inveighed against. “They seem,” he says, “to have drunk of the dust of the heart of king Alexander, for that they seem to think that God made the sea and the land only for them, and that if they could have locked up the sea from Finisterre to Ireland it would have been done long ago,” etc.

Imputations of a similar nature are thrown on the Dutch East India Company by so well informed a man as Sir William Temple, ambassador at the Hague in the reign of Charles II, and who is a very high authority on all matters concerning the republic of the United Provinces. In his “Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning,” he makes the following curious statement, which we give in extenso as otherwise bearing upon the subject of which we treat. See vol. iii of Sir William Temple’s Works, p. 457.

“But the defect or negligence [in the progress of discovery since the invention of the compass] seems yet to have been greater towards the south, where we know little beyond thirty-five degrees, and that only by the necessity of doubling the Cape of Good Hope in our East India voyages: yet a continent has been long since found out within fifteen degrees to the south, about the length of Java, which is marked by the name of New Holland in the maps, and to what extent none knows, either to the south, the east, or the west; yet the learned have been of opinion, that there must be a balance of earth on that side of the line in some proportion to what there is on the other; and that it cannot be all sea from thirty degrees to the south pole, since we have found land to above sixty-five degrees towards the north. But our navigators that way have been confined to the roads of trade, and our discoveries bounded by what we can manage to a certain degree of gain. And I have heard it said among the Dutch, that their East India Company have long since forbidden, and under the greatest penalties, any further attempts of discovering that continent, having already more trade in those parts than they can turn to account, and fearing some more populous nation of Europe might make great establishments of trade in some of those unknown regions, which might ruin or impair what they have already in the Indies.”