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gasear passage were 16 and 18 months in making the voyage. 

 It was in running far cast under the new sailing directions 

 that in 1616 the ship Eendragt {Concord) first sighted the 

 South Land (i.e. the west coast of Australia), in 26° 8. hit., at 

 Shark Bay ; her captain, Dirk Hartog, landing on an island 

 which still bears his name, and putting up an inscribed metal 

 plate, which remained there up to the early part of the present 

 century. The voyage was not without danger, as an English 

 ship, the Tryal, found to her cost; for, following the new 

 Dutch route in 1621, she ran onto the Trial Rocks in 20° S. lat., 

 and was totally wrecked, only a few of her crew succeeding in 

 reaching Batavia in the boats. 



From Hartog's ship the new discovery received the name of 

 Eendragt Land, and in the next four or five years the captains 

 of other ships on the same voyage sighted the west coast, 

 amongst them Edel and Houtman, who in 1619 made the 

 South Land in 32|° S. lat. — north of the present site of Perth — 

 and sailed along it some hundreds of miles, giving it the name 

 of Edel Land, and also naming Houtman's Abrolhos. 



Instructions were issued by the Directors in 1620 and 

 1621 that outward-bound ships leaving the Cape should keep 

 an east course between 30° and 40° S. lat. for 4000 miles, or 

 until they should sight the " New Southland of the Eendragt." 

 With our modern notions these instructions appear extra- 

 ordinary, but in the then existing state of navigation they 

 were practical and well judged. The appliances at the 

 command of ship captains in those days were very imperfect. 

 Without the sextant or the chronometer there was the greatest 

 difficulty in determining the ship's position. It is true that 

 they could find the latitude by the cross-staff with reason- 

 able accuracy, but they had no means of finding the longi- 

 tude except by the rude process of dead reckoning by the 

 log. They had no reliable charts, and had to depend very 

 largely either on their own personal experience of former 

 voyages or on the advice of pilots who had sailed (lie 

 seas before. It was therefore no uncommon thing at the 

 end of a long voyage for the captain to find himself some 

 hundreds of miles out of his reckoning — sometimes even as 

 much as 400 or 600 miles. Thus Brouwer, in the voyage 

 above mentioned, made Sumatra, when according to his 

 estimated position on the chart he was still 320 miles to the 

 westward of the island. The object of the new instructions 

 was, therefore, to enable the ships to ascertain their position 

 after their long run to the east. When they made the South- 

 land they ran north along the coast until they reached the 

 known point of Eendragt Land in 25° or 26° S. lat. From 

 this they took a new departure, and by steering a N.N.W. 



