17 



completely won over, and without further hesitation renewed 

 the treaty of friendship. Tasman's mission being thus 

 successfully completed, he returned with his fleet to Batavia, 

 carrying with him the obnoxious Chinaman, and was 

 received by Van Diemen and his Council with the warmest 

 acknowledgments for his services in having extricated them 

 from what had at one time threatened to be a very serious 

 trouble. 



JIT. — The Great Discovery Voyages to the South- 

 land, 1642-1644. 



1. — The Unknown Southland. 



Tasrnan was now in his fortieth year. In ten years' wander- 

 ings and fightings in the service of the Company lie had 

 grown enured to hardships and danger. He was familiar with 

 the great trade routes from Europe to India, with the intricacies 

 of the waters of the Eastern Archipelago, and with the navi- 

 gation of the Seas of China and Japan. He had sailed a 

 thousand miles beyond the limits reached by any previous 

 navigator into the unknown and mysterious regions of the cold 

 and stormy North Pacific Ocean. In his many voyages he 

 had proved himself a keen trader, a capable and daring seaman, 

 a bold fighter, and an able commander. He was now ready 

 to undertake the great adventure, the crowning achievement of 

 his adventurous life — that voyage to the Great Southland, 

 which, as a Dutch historian says, " must specially immortalise 

 him ; the expedition which must ever give him an honorable 

 place amongst the greatest navigators and discoverers." 



The Great Unknown Southern Continent — Terra Australia 

 Incognita, or Nondum Cognita — had for ages been the dream 

 of geographers. The ancient cosmographers had formulated a 

 theory as to the existence of a huge continent in the south, 

 which they considered necessary to balance the large continents 

 in the northern hemisphere. The discovery of North and 

 South America only lent fresh weight to this conjecture, and 

 it was commonly supposed in the 16th and 17th centuries — and 

 indeed was almost an article of faith — that below the Equator 

 there was a huge continent which had still to be discovered 

 and explored. 



It was in 1513 that the Spaniard Vasco Nunez de Balboa 

 first saw the Pacific from a mountain in Panama. Ferdinand 

 Magellan was the first to enter it. Leaving Spain in 1519, with 

 five small ships of from 130 to 60 tons, this heroic navigator 

 felt his way through the Strait which bears his name, and 

 crossing the great ocean, after months of suffering reached the 

 Ladrones. He himself was killed at the Philippines, but 



