566 Mr. T. Carter on the Birds of [Ibis, 



entered Shark Bay and gave his name to the island upon 

 the western side of the Bay. The name ^^ Dor Eylandt " or 

 '•'Dorre Eylandt" (i. e. Barren Island) was then, or sub- 

 sequently, given to the island at the entrance of the Bay 

 about fifteen miles to the north of Dirk Hartog. A tin plate, 

 inscribed with the name of the ship, date of landing etc., 

 was nailed to a post on the top of the cliff, near where Cape 

 Inscription Lighthouse now stands, by Dirk Hartog. In 

 1697 Willem De Vlaming, who visited this locality, took the 

 original plate down, which he forwarded to Batavia, and 

 thence to Holland for safe keeping, putting up another in 

 its place. The original plate of Dirk Hartog was dis- 

 covered in the State Museum at Amsterdam in 1902 by 

 Mr. De Balbian. 



In 1619 a fleet of eleven vessels, under the command of 

 Frederic van Houtman, discovered and named the Houtman 

 Abrolhos group of islands, about 150 miles south of Steep 

 Point. John van Edels was super-cargo on one of the ships, 

 and the mainland between Shark Bay and Champion Bay 

 (south) was named "Edel Land'' after him. The coast 

 north of Shark Bay, to about Point Cioates or the North- 

 west Cape, had been named "Eendracht's Land'' by Diik 

 Hartog after his ship when he sailed north from Shark Bay 

 in 1616. 



On 17 September, 1627, the ship ' Wapen Van Hoorn' 

 sighted Eendracht's Land near Dirk Hartog Roadstead, and 

 in 1629 some Dutch vessels touched on the Avest coast 

 of Australia in the neighbourhood of Dirk Hartog Road- 

 stead. 



On 1 August, 1699, the English buccaneer, William 

 Dampier (who had visited King's Sound in the northern 

 Kimberley district of Western Australia, in 1688, in the ship 

 'Cygnet') entered Shark Bay in the ship 'Roebuck' and 

 gave the Bay its present name. He spent eight days in a 

 fruitless search for water, and then sailed north for the 

 same purpose, and was " much disgusted with the extreme 

 sterility and waterless aspect of the coastal country." 

 Apparently he never went inland, and probably never tried 



