THE DUTCH DISCOVER AUSTRALIA 229 



seen in the States' Museum of Amsterdam ; and he found 

 that it is indeed the very same common pewter dish on 

 which Dirck Hartog had recorded his discovery in October 

 I6I6. 1 



But this is not the end of the story. When, in Vlamingh's 

 February 1697, Vlamingh took away " the old dish," gjj^jjjf 

 he erected on the same spot " a new pole with a flattened 1801. 

 pewter dish nailed to it," on which he inscribed both 

 the old record and a record of his visit. One hundred 

 and four more years passed, and, in August 1801, Captain 

 Hemelin, sailing in a famous French voyage, sent men 

 to inspect the island. They returned bringing with them 

 this second Dutch dish, which they had found " half 

 covered with sand, lying near a decayed oaken post to 

 which it appeared to have been nailed." The French 

 captain copied the inscriptions, made a curiously bad 

 attempt to translate them, 2 and then put the dish once 

 more on a new post in the old position ; " for he would 

 have deemed it sacrilege to have kept this plate, respected 

 for two centuries by nature, and by those individuals who' 

 might have observed it." It seems, however, that Vla- 

 mingh's dish was brought to Paris by a later French 

 expedition, and apparently has been lost. 3 



Dirck Hartog's discovery had been the inevitable result 

 of the new route. Two years later, in 1618, the skipper of 

 the Zeewulfj without knowledge of Hartog's voyage, came The Zeewulf 

 upon part of the same coast rather further to the North. col^Un^o 

 "We found land," writes the Supercargo, "in 20 15', a 1618. 

 low-lying shore of great length. We do not know whether it 



1 See very interesting articles by Mr. George Collingridge in Sydney 

 Morning Herald, 2nd and gth August, 1913. The lower part of the 

 inscription has decayed away. But it seems perfectly certain that the 

 identification is correct. See p. 231. 



2 Major's Early Voyages to Australia, p. Ixxxiv ; Heeres' Part borne 

 by the Dutch, etc., pp. 84-5. 



3 Heeres' Part borne by the Dutch, p. 85 n. Cf. Dr. Hamy's statement, 

 quoted by Mr. Collingridge. " Vlamingh's replica of Dirck Hartog's 

 plate," conjectures Mr. Collingridge, " must be lying perdu in some 

 corner of the French Institute." Freycinet distinctly states that he 

 sent it there. He made " an evidently inaccurate copy," which is 

 printed by Heeres, p. 85, and reproduced in this volume, p. 231. 



