NOTE ON AN EAELY OHAET SHOWING THE 

 TEACKS OF TASMAN'S VOYAGES IN 1642 AND 

 1644. 



(Diagram.) 



By A. Mault, 

 (Read April 9, 1894.,) 



The Government of Tasmania very liberally caused to be 

 photo-lithographed a facsimile copy .which I had made of a 

 chart showing the tracks of Tasman in his two voyages of 

 pf discovery in the years 1642 and 1644. The chart copied is 

 m the Sloane Collection in the British Museum, and is 

 marked on the back " Bibl. Sloan. 5222, 12. N.W. Closet 16." 

 It is evidently a manuscript of the latter half of the 17th 

 century, and was certainly copied by an Englishman, and 

 probably from the original chart of Francz Jacobsz Visser, the 

 chief pilot on board the HeemsMrJc on Tasman's first voyage, 

 and captain and chief pilot of the Lemmen, Tasman's flagship 

 in the expedition of 1644. A reduced map from the same 

 chart is given in Major's "Early Voyages to Terra Australis," 

 published in 1859 by theHakluyt Society. 



The Museum chart is drawn on paper in black ink, now 

 faded. After the chart was drawn (possibly since Major's 

 ^ap was published) some one has added blue chalk lines, 

 connecting Tasman's discoveries in the south of Tasmania 

 ■with those he made in New Guinea on the one side, and those 

 °f Peter Nuyts on the other. In the photolithographs these 

 pltte lines have come out black. " Abell Tasman's passage " 

 is marked in pricked lines. That of the 1642 voyage begins 

 at about the longitude of Cape Leeuwin and ends at the north 

 pf the island of Ceram, the last place mentioned in Tasmans' 

 journal of that voyage. The track of the 1644 voyage begins 

 at the south-western coast of New Guinea, and, missing 

 Torres Straits, goes round the Gulf of Carpentaria and the 

 northern and western shores of Australia to Endracht Land 

 whence he returned to Batavia. In the pricked track of the 

 first voyage no soundiugs are given, in that of the second the 

 soundings are given along the part of the passage within 

 soundings. I therefore think this chart is a copy of that 

 made by Francz Jacobsz during this second expedition. _ And 

 there are other circumstances substantiating this opinion, 

 notably the inscription in the middle of the chart, to which 

 1 shall again refer. 



The expedition of 1644 probably started from Batavia on 

 the 30th of January in that year, and was expected to return, 

 if the instructions were fulfilled, in July, but as no journal of 

 the voyage has been yet discovered this chart and a few 



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