CHAPTER XIV 



THE DUTCH DISCOVER AUSTRALIA 



AUTHORITIES : 



Australian navigations discovered by Jacob Le Maire, in The 

 East and West Indian Mirror, ed. VILLIERS (Hakluyt Society). 

 . HEERES' Part borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia. 

 HEERES' Tasman. 



MAJOR'S Early Voyages to Australia (Hakluyt Society). 

 COOTE'S Remarkable Maps. 



QUIROS had died his "timely death" in 1615. And 

 in the same year Dutchmen sailed to achieve his plans. 

 The voyage Isaac Le Maire was a great merchant of Amsterdam. 

 and 6 airC He had read the Memorials of Quiros, and was convinced 

 Schouten, that a huge continent, rich in gold and spices, existed 

 in the South Pacific. Schouten, a famous seaman, who 

 had made three voyages to the East Indies, agreed to 

 undertake, together with Le Maire's son James, the voyage 

 of exploration which had been refused by the Spaniards. 

 The adventurers were not members of the Dutch East 

 India Company, and they were therefore barred from sailing 

 thither by way of the Cape, or by way of the Straits. But 

 they believed that it would be possible to find a new passage 

 South of Tierra del Fuego. Magellan and his sailors 

 had suspected that the land to the South of the Straits 

 was not part of a continent but an archipelago of islands. 

 Drake had proved that this view was true, and it had been 

 represented both in English and in Dutch maps. 1 It was 

 now proposed to seek this hitherto unexplored passage, 

 to sail through it to the South Seas, to follow in the track 



1 Corbett's Drake, vol. i. p. 258 (1899 edition). 

 220 



