304 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



of the land rather than any whirlpool or the like that sur- 

 prises them." l The Dutch charts, he believed, made the 

 South Sea too wide, and the Indian Ocean too narrow. 

 Whatever the cause, the shipwrecks continued, and the 

 Abrolhos became a museum of Dutch antiquities. In 1840 

 some Englishmen visited the islands. 2 They found remnants 

 of a ship, and near them a copper coin of the East India 

 Company dated 1620, which seemed to suggest the wreck 

 of Pelsart's Batavia in 1628. On another island were 

 relics of another ship, with a coin dated 1700, which perhaps 

 had been lost by some passenger on the Zeewyk in 1727. 

 " On this island we found a large number of small glass 

 bottles about the size and form of Dutch cheeses, very 

 A museum of orderly arranged in rows on the ground ; a few very large 

 antiqun IBS. Bottles of similar form ; some large brass buckles which 

 had been gilded, and much of the gilt still existed, also 

 numerous small clay pipes, which served to solace our 

 crew with the help of tobacco, as doubtless they had done 

 long ago for former owners, and one brass gun with vermilion 

 paint still on the muzzle." 



1 Dampier, vol. i. p. 301. 2 Major's Early Voyages, p. 179. 



