20 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



He entered a stream which, on account of its numerous black swans, was called Swan 

 River, and here he landed with eighty-eight men, and marched fifty miles inland, but he 

 neither saw nor heard anything of the missing crew. He then sailed northward, creeping 

 slowly along the shore and putting off boats to examine every likely inlet, yet dis- 

 covering no trace of the missing ship. At last he anchored in Shark Bay, just two 

 years before the arrival of Dampier. He there thought that a clue to the lost ship and 

 crew was discovered, but it turned out to be merely a post on which was nailed a 

 |)late containing the information that Dirk Hartog had landed there in 1616 about 

 eighty years before. The extreme sterility of all this part of the coast made it impos- 

 sible that the Dutchmen could have lived on it for twelve years, and so the Commander 

 abandoned his search, and from the North West Cape shaped his course for Batavia ; but 

 with him he took charts that added to the knowledge of the western coast of Australia. 

 Henceforth the Southern Ocean and its lands became better and better known. Anson, 

 Byron, Wallis, and Carteret ; De Boungainville, La Perouse and D'Entrecasteaux sailed hither 

 and thither. Vain dreams and vague theories of sunset archipelagoes and ice-bound 

 Southern Continents filled men's minds and urged them outward bound. In the eloquent 

 words of Besant : " The English brain was fired with the thought of the Pacific as in 

 Queen Elizabeth's time it had been fired with the thought of the West Indies. Reports 

 came home of lovely islands ; the English, though as yet they knew nothing of Hawaii 

 or Tahiti, had heard of Juan Fernandez and Masafuera ; they had read the voyages of 

 \\ oodes Rogers, of Clipperton and Shelvocke ; with Anson they had visited the lovely 

 Tinian, with its strange avenues of pillars ; they knew of the Galapagos, the sea-lions of 

 California, the Spice Islands and the Ladrones, the Tierra del Fuego and its miserable 

 people. The long smouldering theory of the Southern Continent revived again. Scientific 

 men proved beyond a doubt that the right balance of the globe required a Southern 

 Continent ; otherwise it would of course tip over. Geographers pointed out how Ouiros, 

 Juan Fernandez and Tasman had all touched at various points of that Continent. Men 

 of imagination spoke of treasures of all kinds which would be found there, and would 

 belong to the nation which should discover and annex this land ; they laid it down on 

 the maps and reckoned up the various kinds of climate which would be enjoyed in a 

 country stretching from the Southern Pole through forty degrees of latitude. The most 

 extravagant ideas were formed of what might be found, fictitious travels fed the imagi- 

 nation of the people ; men confidently looked forward to acquiring a prolonged rule over 

 other golden lands, such as had been for nearly three hundred years the making and 

 the unmaking of Spain. In every age there is always a grasping after what seems to 

 promise the sovereignty of the world. In every age there is a Carthage to be destroyed ; 

 and in every age there are half a dozen countries each of which is eager and anxious 



o 



to enact the part of Rome. Such is, in brief outline, the story many times told but 

 always new, of the principal voyages of discovery on the great Pacific Ocean." 



I p to the time of Cook one name stands forth among the names of those who 

 sought a Southern Continent. In the history of maritime exploration and discovery in 

 connection with Australia undoubtedly the romantic figure of De Ouiros looms forth in 

 proportions which dwarf the long succession of mariners whom chance or misfortune cast 

 upon the shores of that land of which he is the apostle. It is true that the actual 



