280 



DISCOVERY OF VAN MEMEN S LAND. 



bis ships, the Mascarin and Marquis de Castries, on the 

 5th March, 1772, anchored at a spot somewhat to the 

 north-west of the HeemslterKs anchorage in 1642. 

 Marion took this to be the Frederick Henry Bay of 

 Tasmania, but, as we have already seen, this was almost, 

 certainly an error, and since the visit of the Mascarin 

 the outer bay, as distinguished from the inner, has borne 

 on the charts the more appropriate designation of Marion 

 Bay. The description in the narrative of the voyage* is 

 not sufficiently exact to enable us to determine the 

 precise spot where the French landed, but it appears to 

 have been on the Two Mile Beach (North Bay of our 

 present maps). On this beach it was that the aborigines 

 of Tasmania first came into contact with Europeans. 

 The meeting was an ill-omened one. The blacks resisted 

 the landing, and attacked Marion's party with stones and 

 spears. The French, in retaliation, fired upon them, 

 killing one man and wounding others. The ships lay at 

 anchor in the bay for six days, during which the French 



explored the country for a considerable distance, 

 searching for fresh water and timber for spars, but they 

 saw nothing more of the natives after this first fatal 

 encounter. Being unable to find either good water or 

 timber suitable for his needs, Marion sailed on March 10 

 for New Zealand, where he met his death in a treacherous 

 attack on his people by the Maoris. 



The next navigator who visited the Tasmanian coast 

 was Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook's second in command 

 on his second voyage of discovery. It is to Furneaux's 

 blunders that the confusion respecting Frederick Henry 

 Bay is due. The two ships, the Resolution and the 

 Adventure, were separated by a storm in latitude 50" 

 south, between the Cape and Australia. Cook, in the 

 Resolution, kept on his course for New Zealand ; Fur- 

 neaux, in the Adventure, being short of water, bore up 

 for the land laid down by Tasman as Van Diemen's 

 Land. On March 9, 1773', Furneaux sighted the land 

 at a point which he took to be Tasman's South Cape. 

 The point was, in fact, South West Cape, and from this 

 initial error the whole course of subsequent blunders 

 arose. From South West Cape he sailed eastward 

 intending to make Tasman's anchorage in Frederick 

 Henry Bay. Reaching the South (.'ape, he mistook it 

 for the Boreel Islands, south of Bruny, and mistook the 



tfouveau du Snd, commence sous les ordres d@ M. Marion 



Redlge d'apres les Journaux Uo M. Ci'ozct (Paris, 1783), Through the exertions 

 ot Mr. McClymont and Mr. A. Manlt, Marion's charts of. Van Diemen's Land 

 have been discovered in Paris, and fnc similes of them obtained. See tire 

 Society's Papers and Proceedings for 1«89. 



