72 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



settle whether " New Guinea " (as he regarded it), or Cape York 

 Peninsula (in reality), was continuous with Arnhem Land or 

 whether a passage to the south lay between. 



Presumably with the intention of making certain that he was 

 now on an unexplored shore, Tasman made his first descent at 

 17 30' (Swart) or 17 33' (Heeres), where he named VAN DIEMEN 

 INLET (Revier). Next, he named the VAN DER LIJN and CARON 

 INLETS, the latter in 17 47'. 



FLINDERS, in 1802, in the "Investigator" believed he had 

 identified Tasman's Van Diemen Inlet in the mouth of the Gilbert 

 River (16 57'). All the attendant circumstances point to the 

 incorrectness of this identification, but it has, nevertheless, been 

 adopted without question in subsequent official maps. Firstly, 

 there is the discrepancy between the latitudes of 16 57' and 17 30'. 

 Then it is precisely at his Van Diemen's Inlet that Tasman makes 

 the trend of the coast-line change from S. by W. to W. by S. I 

 see no reason for doubting that Tasman's latitude of 17 30' was 

 substantially correct, especially as it is here that his chart shows 

 the abrupt change in the trend of the coast-line. There can be no 

 reasonable doubt that Tasman's VAN DIEMEN INLET was the MOUTH 

 OF THE NORMAN RIVER, now the port for the Croydon goldfield 

 and a considerable area of pastoral country. Its latitude is 17 28'. 



Tasman's three inlets, the Van Diemen, Van Der Lijn and 

 Caron, are all, according to his chart, within 17 minutes of 

 latitude. The position in which the name of the VAN DER LIJN 

 is written appears to me to be purposely indefinite, as if it were 

 designed to convey merely that the inlet is between the Van Diemen 

 and the Caron. I take it to be what is now mapped as the 

 " BYNOE " mouth of the FLINDERS RIVER. 



The CARON INLET is placed on Tasman's chart in 17 47', and 

 must be the principal MOUTH OF THE FLINDERS itself. Here, how- 

 ever, Tasman's latitude is incorrect, according to modern charts, 

 which place the mouth of the river in 17 36', so that Tasman's 

 position is II minutes inland. I am under the impression that 

 Tasman had become rather indifferent as to his true position 

 and had come to regard the continuity of the coast of the Cape 

 York Peninsula with that of Arnhem Land as the problem of the 

 moment. 



It may be noted here that FLINDERS' chart of 1802 shows the 

 CAPRON RIVER coming from the east and falling into the Norman 

 River at Normanton. Subsequent Lands Department maps have 

 always given the name of the CARRON RIVER to this water-course, 

 thus creating a mistaken impression that this was supposed to be 

 Tasman's Caron. 



From the Caron Inlet (Flinders River) Tasman passes beyond 

 our ken. By following the coast he established the CONTINUITY 

 OF THE CAPE YORK PENINSULA (which he named CARPENTARIA) 



