14 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA ch. 



tion of Van Diemen's Land or Tasmania, is the 

 story of rival French and Enghsh discoverers 

 saiUng, often ostensibly in the interests of science, 

 but always with a view to annexing territory or 

 establishing spheres of interest, who met, frater- 

 nized, and outwitted one another by turns in 

 Australian waters. 



This epoch begins in 1770 with Captain Cook's 

 first voyage, to observe the transit of Venus at 

 Tahiti, which had for its most important result 

 the exploration of the East Australian coast and 

 the discovery of Botany Bay and New South 

 Wales. Two years later Van Diemen's Land was 

 visited, for the first time since Tasman, by a 

 French Captain, Marion du Fresne ; he was the 

 first to see or hold converse with the natives, 

 and owing to a misunderstanding the natives 

 attacked the sailors with stones, and a few shots 

 were fired by the Europeans. 



In 1773, during Cook's second voyage Captain 

 Furneaux was separated from Cook in a storm 

 and made the east coast of Tasmania, where he 

 landed, but he did not see any of the natives, 

 only stumbling across their simple bark huts, and 

 noticing the extensive bush fires which they had 

 started. On his third voyage, 1777, Captain 

 Cook, with two ships, the Resolution and Discovery, 

 entered and landed in Adventure Bay on Bruny 

 Island, and this is the first occasion on which we 

 learn anything definite about the natives. 



Bruny Island is a winding strip of hilly country 



