,8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



With the exception of Francis Pelsart, the first voyager to publish any authentic 

 information about the main-land of Australia was William Dampier, an Englishman, whose 

 first visit was of a singular character. He had been for many years leading a roving- 

 life among tin- \\Vst Indies, when an old friend of his, named Captain Swan, arrived 

 on the Brazilian coast in the Cygnet, a vessel fitted out by some London merchants for 

 tin- South American trade, and Dampier joined him as supercargo. 



These seas were then swarming with buccaneers, and the Spaniards in their suspi- 

 cion would not surfer the Cygnet to approach their towns, much less to engage with 

 them in commerce. The crew became restless and mutinied. They resolved to become 

 buccaneers also, and rob the Spaniards, with whom they could not trade. Swan consented 

 to retain the command if the men were willing to allow his employers a share of the 

 spoils, and so they began a plundering career all over the high seas, in the course of 

 which they reached the Philippine Islands. Swan and the more orderly part of the crew- 

 soon wearied of the life that their dissolute comrades were leading, and these, in 

 their turn, regarded them with contempt. The result was that the disgusted Commander 

 and forty of his company were landed on the Philippine Islands, and there left to shift 

 for themselves;, but Dampier, having no wish to fall into the hands either of Spaniards 

 or of Malays, remained on board, and awaited a better opportunity to escape from his 

 uncongenial comrades and return to his native land. 



After her long cruise the Cygnet badly needed overhauling, but the crew dared not 

 approach any settlement for the purpose. They accordingly fixed on New Holland, and 

 on the 4th of January, 1688, entered an inlet on the north-west coast, warped the vessel 

 up into shallow water, and on the fall of the tide had the satisfaction of seeing her 

 high and dry, a full half-mile from the water's edge. They then pitched tents on shore 

 and dug a well, as no surface water was to be found, and set to work to repair their 

 battered vessel and renew their supply of water. They were ten weeks on that inhospi- 

 table shore, hard at work cleaning the ship's bottom and generally overhauling her, but 

 Dampier, who had little communication with his privateering companions, spent a great 

 deal of his time in quiet examination of the surrounding country. When they again set 

 sail he resolved to leave them at the first opportunity, and with two others was put 

 ashore at the Nicobar Islands, from which, after many adventures, he reached Sumatra, 

 and thence obtained a passage to Europe. His buccaneering comrades met with no great 

 The Cygnet became a floating pandemonium, and after tossing about until she was 

 rotten, sank at her moorings in a lonely harbour in Madagascar. 



Dampier found on his arrival in England that, during his absence, James II. had 



retired to France, and that William III., Prince of Orange, was reigning in his stead. 



This sovereign too k t h e greatest possible interest in the two volumes of travels that 



Dampier published, and showed it in an eminently practical manner by sending him 



with a small vessel, the Roebuck, to solve the problem as to whether this New 

 Holland was really a continent or only an archipelago. 



sailed with fifty men and provisions for a long voyage, and on the ist of 



1699, again sighted the north-west coast of Australia, and anchored in a fine 



vhich he gave the name of Shark Bay. Five days spent in looking for water 



and digging wells gave no result, and they were glad to start on their cruise along 



