42 



It remains to mention the well-known story of Tasman's 

 supposed attachment to a daughter of Governor-General Van 

 Diemen, evidenced by his naming various places, e.g. Cape 

 Maria Van Diemen, Maria Island, Maria Bay at Tonga. 

 Flinders first suggested this little romance in his Voyage to 

 Terra Australia, published in 1814. It pleased the fancy of 

 the French geographer Eyries somewhere about 1820, and has 

 been repeated and enlarged upon for some eighty years. 



It is a pretty story, but unfortunately for the romance it has 

 not the slightest foundation. In the light, of recent investiga- 

 tions Tasman appears as a twice-married man of middle age, 

 with a grown-up daughter. But this is not conclusive. 

 Perhaps the next argument against the story is more cogent : 

 Van Diemen had no daughter. If, however, anyone is still 

 unconvinced, we may clinch the argument with the express 

 statement of Tasman attached to one of the drawings in his 

 Journal: — " We have named this bay Maria Bay in compli- 

 ment to the wife of Governor-General Van Diemen." If 

 anyone after this requires further proof, let him consult the 

 papers of the Dutch East India Company, or continue to 

 write- sentiment on the ardent young sailor's unrequited love. 



To conclude. Tasman's discoveries, great as they were from 

 a geographical point of view, bore no fruit for more than a 

 hundred years. His tracks were marked on the charts, but as 

 to the countries he discovered, his countrymen in the East 

 Indies, whose sole object was trade, felt no temptation to 

 explore the wild bush of Van Diemen's Land, or to face the 

 fierce tribes of Massacre Bay, or even to plant colonies on the 

 barren and inhospitable shores of Western Australia peopled 

 by naked savages. Only the Englishman Dampier in 1688, 

 and again in 1699, visited the western coast, and was glad to 

 leave what he described as the most miserable country on 

 earth. Had Tasman but discovered the way through Torres 

 Strait, it is possible that New South Wales might have been 

 colonised by the Dutch. It was reserved, however, for an 

 English navigator, more than a century after Tasman's voyage, 

 to make the practical discovery of Australia as a land for 

 European colonisation. When Captain Cook in his first 

 famous voyage in the Endeavour, on Sunday, 29th April, 1770, 

 cast anchor in. Botany Bay, the Australian Continent was first 

 laid open to European enterprise ; eighteen years later Sydney 

 was founded by Englishmen. Would that the first plantingof 

 these Colonies had been other than it was, and that the wise 

 warning of Lord Bacon had been heeded ; for, says he — " It 

 is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of the 

 people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom 



