AUSTRALASIA. 



121 



1500-1 



Dampier. 



latitude 42 3 25' south, and east longitude 163 50', 

 he saw land, bearing north-cast, ten miles distant, 

 which he called Van Diemen's Land. Running 

 the coast, he anchored in a bay, which he call- 

 ed Frederic Henry's Bay, in latitude 43 10', and 

 longitude 167 55'. He saw no people, but lofty 

 trees, with deep notches, which the natives had cut 

 to assist them in climbing. This land, discovered by 

 Tasman, was long esteemed the southern part of New 

 Holland; but 'ater discoveries have proved it, to be 

 quite a different country. 



The Dutch were, therefore, the first, so far as we 

 can at present ascertain, who made any observations 

 on this part of Australasia, which, indeed, their es- 

 tablishments in India, and frequent voyages thither, 

 enabled them the more readily to do. Accord- 

 ingly we find, that it was in such voyages commonly 

 that they became acquainted with the coast. In the 

 year 16%', Vlaming sailed from the Texel in quest 

 of a Dutch East Indiaman, supposed to have been 

 lost somewhere on the coast of New Holland, du- 

 ring a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to Ba- 

 tavia. In December of the same year he made the 

 coast in 31 58' south latitude, and 130 13' east 

 longitude. He landed with a number of men, and 

 saw some natives at a distance,' of a middle stature, 

 quite black, and entirely naked, with whom the 

 Dutch seem to have had no immediate intercourse. 

 Prosecuting his search, Vlaming found the tin plate 

 before alluded to, left by his countrymen in 1616, 

 nailed to a post, and added the following inscrip- 

 tion, as the French found it in 1801 : " 1697, on the 

 4th of February, the ship Geelvink of Amsterdam 

 arrived here ; Wilhelm de Vlaming, captain com- 

 mandant ; John Bremen of Copenhagen, assistant ; 

 Michael Bloem Van Estight of Bremen, assistant ; 

 the dogger Nyptangh, Captain Gerrit Colaart of 

 Amsterdam ; Theodore Hiermanns, of the same 

 place, assistant ; first pilot, Gerrit Gerritzen of Bre- 

 men : the galley Net Weseltje, Cornelius de Vlaming 

 of Vlielandt, commander ; Coert Gerritzen of Bre- 

 men, pilot. Our fleet sails hence, leaving the south- 

 ern territories, for Batavia." The tin plate was dis- 

 covered half buried in sand, attached to the remains 

 of a wooden post, in 1801. The inscriptions were 

 carefully copied, and the plate replaced on the north 

 point of Dirk Hartighs Isle, where it was found, a 

 new post having been erected for it. 



Omitting other expeditions of less importance, we 

 ought not to overlook the voyages of William Dam- 

 pier, one of the most intelligent navigators who ever 

 sailed from Britain. He twice revisited the Austral- 

 asian regions, and landed on the coast of New Hol- 

 land. In his first voyage he remained on it two 

 months, from January 1688, and gives a deplorable 

 picture of the country. It was flat, low, and sandy, 

 and afforded no fresh water, except what was dug 

 out of wells. Few fishes inhabited the sea; and the 

 traces of no quadruped, excepting one, were seen. 

 Scarcely any birds larger than a blackbird appeared ; 

 and he was unsuccessful in searching for fruits. The 

 natives were the most miserable creatures in the uni- 

 ;dmost stark naked, and without houses or 

 covering. They had no religion or government, and 



vol.. 111. PART i. 



1500-170(1. 



cohabited promiscuously. Dampier describes the Austrai- 

 savages as of extreme ugliness ; and, in his second 

 voyage in 1699, speaking of their custom of paint- 

 ing themselves, he thus expresses himself regarding 

 an individual : " This, his painting, adding much to 

 his natural deformity, for they all of them are of the 

 most unpleasant look, and the worst features of any 

 people ever I saw, though I have seen a great variety 

 of savages." He observes, that New Holland is a 

 very large tract of land, but it was not then fully 

 determined whether a continent or an island ; he was 

 certain, however, that it joined neither Asia, Africa, 

 nor America. 



The unfavourable appearances exhibited by the 

 greater part of the coast of NewHolland, and the islands 

 in its vicinity, restrained those nations, to which they 

 were best known, from repeating their voyages towards 

 them. But, while little progress had been made in ex- 

 ploring this pant of Australasia, some others had oc- 

 casionally been visited ; and of the whole, it is not 

 unlikely that the islands of Papua, or New Guinea, 

 were the first discovered by navigators. A Portu- 

 guese officer, Don Jorge de Menezes, in a voyage Menezes. 

 from Malacca to the Molucca Islands, to the com- 

 mand of which he had been appointed, wintered in a 

 port immediately north, it would seem, of the great 

 land of Papua, in 1526. This port was probably in 

 one of the islands close to it. Other islands are men- 

 tioned, and all are said to be inhabited by the Papuans, 

 or Papoos, the name by which the natives are now 

 known. 



A squadron, fitted out in the year 1526, for the Saavedra, 

 purpose of discovering spice islands in the South 

 Seas, sailed from Mexico, under the command of 

 Alvarez de Saavedra, a Spaniard. A long time 

 seems to have been occupied in this search ; in re- 

 turning from which, Saavedra discovered the land of 

 Papua, or the adjacent islands. Believing that the 

 country which he saw abounded in gold, he called it 

 the Ista del Oro ; it afterwards received the name of 

 New Guinea, not from this source, but, as some af- 

 firm, from navigators thinking it opposite to Guinea, 

 on the coast of Africa, or from a supposed resem- 

 blance between the inhabitants of the two countries. 

 Saavedra found them black, with short curled hair, 

 and going naked. Their civilization even then far 

 exceeded the state of most of the present natives of 

 Australasia, for they had not only swords of iron, 

 but other arms of the same metal. Saavedra, after 

 remaining a month here, ran along the same land 100 

 leagues to the southward. Some canoes from an 

 island then attacked his ship, in consequence of 

 which he took three of the people prisoners. Next 

 year, 1529, lie brought them back in another voyage. 

 Whenever they recognised their native island, two 

 leapt overboard, and swam away ; the third, more 

 tractable, engaged to explain the pacific views of the 

 Spaniards to his countrymen. As the ship ap- 

 proached the shore, he also leapt overboard ; and the 

 Spaniards had the mortification to see him killed 

 while still in the water. If we can trust the ac- 

 counts of this 8econd voyage, Saavedra traversed 

 more of the coast of Papua than any subsequent na- 

 vigator lias done. Other Spaniards also fell in with. 

 Q 



