THE DISCOVERY OF VAN DIEMEN'S 



LAND IN 1642; WITH NOTES ON THE 

 LOCALITIES MENTIONED IN TAS- 

 MAN'S JOURNAL OF THE VOYAGE. 



By James Backhouse Walker. 



Abet, Janszoon Tasffian was unquestionably one of 

 the greatest, if not the greatest, of the navigators between 

 Magellan, who in the early years of the 16th century 

 first crossed the Pacific Ocean, and Cook, who in the 

 latter years of the 18th practically opened Oceania, and 

 Australia to Europe. 



Little is known of Tasman's personal history, except 

 that he was born about the year 1602, at Iloorn on the 

 Zuyder Zee, a seaport which produced many another 

 hardy navigator. Tasman has made familiar in our seas 

 the name of one of these fellow townsmen, the Cornelis- 

 zoon Schouten, who in 1616 doubled the Cape, afterwards 

 called the Horn in honour of the birthplace of its dis- 

 coverer. 



That Tasman's merit has not received due recognition, 

 and that his tame has not been as wide as his achievements 

 deserved, is the fault of his own countrymen. In the 16th 

 and 1 7th centuries the persistent policy of the Dutch was 

 to conceal the discoveries of their navigators, and suppress 

 their charts, for fear other nations should reap advantage 

 from the knowledge and rival them in the eastern seas. 

 In later times when this motive had lost its force, Tasman's 

 countrymen were strangely indifferent to the honour 

 which their great sailor had won for his native land. Of 

 his second voyage in 1644-in which he explored the nor- 

 thern coast of Australia, and laid down with painstaking 

 accuracy the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria — we have 

 to this day only meagre hints and the record contained in 

 a sketch map. Of his more famous voyage to the Great 

 Southland in 1642 — in which he discovered Tasmania and 

 New Zealand, and made a great step towards solving the 

 vexed problem of the fancied Terra Australis — the journal 

 remained unpublished for more than two centuries. 

 It is true that a short abstract of this voyage was pub- 

 lished in Holland late in the 17th century, and was shortly 

 afterwards translated into English, and included in several 

 collections of voyages made by English and French 

 editors, and that Va1entyn,in his great work on the Dutch 



