NOTES BY JAMES BACKHOUSE "WALKER. 



271 



should be altered, and that the ships should make for lat. 

 44deg. 8. until 130deg. E. long, was reached, when, it 

 no mainland was meet with, they should sail into 40deg. 

 S. lat,, and steer on that parallel until they reached 

 200deg. E. long. By this course lie thought they would 

 be sure to fall in with islands, and having so far solved 

 the problem of the great southern continent, he advised 

 that they should stand north for the Solomon Islands, 

 whence they might shape their course for home. By 

 the middle" of November they came to the conclusion 

 that they had passed the extreme limits of the supposed 

 continent, but' on the 24th of the month land was 

 seen bearing east by north, distant 10 Dutch miles (40 

 miles English.) Unlike the invariable low sandy shore 

 which former captains had described as characteristic 

 of the Great Southland, the country before them was 

 mountainous, and clothed with dark forest. Tasman 

 says : " This is the furthest land in the South Sea we 

 met with, and as it has not yet been known to any 

 European we called it Anthony Van Diemen's Land, m 

 honour of the Governor-General, our master, who sent 

 us out to make discoveries. The islands round about, as 

 manv as were known to us, we named in honour oi the 

 Council of India." They skirted the newly-discovered 

 land, and on December 1 came to an anchor in a bay on 

 the east coast. On December 3 they weighed anchor 

 and .-idled north until they reached a point about St. 

 Patrick's Head, from whence they stood away eastward 

 to make new discoveries. After eight days they sighted 

 land, which Tasman called Staten Land, thinking that 

 it might be part of the Southern continent and joined to 

 Staten Land, east of Tierra del Fuego. (When this 

 supposition was shortly afterwards shown to be an error,* 

 the name was changed to that of New Zealand.) After 

 a fatal encounter with the Maoris, Tasman sailed along 

 the west coast of New Zealand to Cape Maria \an 

 Diemen, and thence took a north-east course, discovering 

 Amsterdam and other islands, and alter skirting the 

 north coast of New Guinea, he returned to Batayia. 

 In his second voyage in 1644, Tasman again sailed 

 from Batavia and explored the west, north-west, and 

 north coasts of Australia, the Gulf of Carpentaria. 

 and the southeast of New Guinea. Thus in the two 

 voyages, though he left the question of the existence_ ot 

 a southern continent still unsolved, he had made the first 

 ".omplete circumnavigation of Australia and New Guinea. 



• By the voyage of Brouwor round Cape Horn in 1643, 



