FIRST EXPEDITION 501 



The true position of the DrrcH COEN (which was named in honour of Jan Pieterszoon 

 Coen, Governor of the Dutch East India Company) is settled by the publication of 

 Jan Carstenszoon's diary in The Part borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia, 

 1606-1765," by Professor J. E. Heeres, LL.D. London, Luzac & Co., 1899. The 

 Journal gives the latitude 'as 13 7' S., i.f. t between Pera Heads and the mouth of the 

 Watson River. There is nothing in the Diary to indicate that the " Coen Revier " 

 was a water-course of any importance : all that is recorded of it is that it yielded 

 " salad herbs." An inlet in 13 4' S. has been mapped by the Mapoon missionaries, 

 and there is no reason to doubt that this is the true Dutch Coen. R. L. J.] 



The aspect of the site of the rush differed but little at the date 

 of our visit from that of other abandoned diggings. The first 

 thing to strike the eyes of one who had travelled more than 250 miles 

 from the nearest civilised dwelling was, of course, the building which 

 had done duty as public-house and store a rough frame of saplings, 

 with walls and roof of messmate bark, and with a bar fashioned out 

 of barrel-staves and the timbers of brandy and gin cases, opening on 

 the verandah. Hundreds of bottles, mammoth heaps of bones and 

 scores of jam-, butter- and sardine-tins attested that, for a time at 

 least, good living was the order of the day. A hundred yards off, 

 across a gully, stood the killing-yard, still in good repair. Two miles 

 up the river was the PROSPECTORS' HUT, strongly built of squared 

 logs, LOOPHOLED AND SPEAR-PROOF the stronghold in which the 

 four stout hearts held their own against all the native population 

 of the Peninsula. Here and there a bough-shed, a few groups of 

 charred tent-pegs or ridge-poles, and occasionally the frame of a 

 ;< bunk," were all that remained of the less ambitious dwellings at 

 the time of our visit. 



The last to abandon the place had buried in the shanty about 

 half a ton of flour, with drapery, crockery, groceries, tools and 

 cooking utensils, partly with a view of not letting them fall into the 

 hands of the blacks and partly in the hope of the stores being useful 

 if the place should still turn out well. We found the whole 

 untouched, but hopelessly damaged by water, the rain from the 

 roof having found its way in the wet season through the funnels 

 (hollow trees) provided for ventilation. The very " high " smell 

 of the decaying flour led us for a time to believe in the proximity 

 of an extensive deposit of fine old cheese. As we were the last who 

 could possibly benefit by it, we saved all the flour that we could 

 (about 14 lb.) by drying it in the sun and parching it in the frying- 

 pan. Thus cured, it was baked into dampers for the dogs, and, 

 as far as it went, saved our little store. 



Considering what prizes the tomahawks, saws, shovels and other 

 iron tools would have been for the blacks, we were not a little sur- 

 prised that the cellar had not been rifled. As a rule, the natives 

 fashion, with infinite pains, such unconsidered trifles of old iron as 

 shovels, broken pick-heads, scraps of iron hoops, ship's bolts, tele- 

 graph wire, cart-wheel tires and the like into weapons and imple- 

 ments, with which they perform prodigies in the way of tree-felling, 



