IN TIMOR-LAUT. 301 



When the islands were first discovered and the name Timor- 

 laut or Tenimber first applied, I have not been able to discover. 

 In Mercator's atlas of 1636, they are represented on a small 

 scale in his map of the East Indian Islands. The first informa- 

 tion we possess of a reliable kind is by Captain Owen Stanley, 

 whose name is perpetuated in that magnificent pile of moun- 

 tains in the south-east promontory of New Guinea, whose heights 

 no white foot has yet ascended. In liis ' Visits to the Islands 

 in the Arafura Sea,' in 1 839 (in Stokes' ' Discoveries in Austra- 

 lia ') he says : " We sailed from Port Essington on March 18, 

 1839 .... Light airs prevented our clearing the harbour till 

 the morning of the 19th, and at 3 p.m. on the 20th we made 

 the land of Timor-laut. . . . j^t daylight on the 21st we made 

 all sail to the northward . . . and anchored in 11 fathoms, 

 sand and coral, three-quarters of a mile from the shore. On 

 landing the contrast to the Australian shores [Captain Stanley 

 approached from the opposite point of the compass from myself] 

 we had so recently sailed from was very striking. We left a 

 land covered with the monotonous interminable forest of the 

 eucalyptus or gum tree, which from the peculiar structure of 

 its leaf affords but little shelter from the tropical sun ; shores 

 fringed with impenetrable mangroves, . . . the natives black, 

 the lowest in the scale of civilised life. . . . We landed on a 

 beach, along which a luxuriant growth of cocoa-nut trees ex- 

 tended for more than a mile, under the shade of which were 

 sheds neatly constructed of bamboo and thatched with palm- 

 leaves, for tlie reception of their canoes. To our right a hill 

 rose to a height of 400 feet covered with brilliant and varied 

 vegetation so luxuriant as entirely to conceal the village 

 (Oliliet) built on its summit. The natives who thronged the 

 beach were of a light tawny colour, mostly fine athletic men 

 with an intelligent expression of countenance." 



With the exception of this meagre account we have no 

 farther information regarding Timor-laut for nearly thirty- 

 eight years, when a vessel belonging to some Banda traders 

 visited the island in 1877, an account of which is given in the 

 Journal of the Eoyal Geographical Society for 1878 (p. 294), 

 under the title of " Voyages of the Steamer Egeron in the 

 Indian Archipelago, including the discovery of Egeron Strait 

 in the Tenimber or Timor-laut Islands." These voyages were 

 21 



