i 

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AUSTRALIA CIRCUMNAVIGATED. 373 



started, after an absence of ten months. His expedition was the 

 clearest and most precise of the several voyages which had been 

 made for the discovery of the Terra Australis Incognita : few 

 voyages, since that of Magellan, had contributed more to geo- 

 graphical science ; for, by reducing the limits of the Terra Aus- 

 tralis, as he did by circumnavigating the supposed continent, 

 he did much to rid geography of its most important error. 



Tasman made a second voyage in 1644 ; but his journals and 

 his track have been completely lost, — probably by design, as 

 the Butch did not make geographical researches in the interest 

 of the world, but exclusively in that of the East India Com- 

 pany. By his second voyage he is believed to have determined 

 the extent of the great Gulf of Carpentaria, which so profoundly 

 indents the northern coast of New Holland. The portion of his 

 discoveries relative to New Zealand and the Friendly Islands 

 has been completed by Cook; that relative to Van Diemen's 

 Land by d'Entrecasteaux, in his voyage in search of Lape- 

 rouse. The fragments which remain of Tasman' s journals attest 

 his reasoning powers, his nautical experience, and his unerring 

 judgment. The Dutch never published his own account of his 

 adventures, and the few extracts which have become public 

 crept by accident and stealth into later works and journals 

 of discovery. A Dutch writer thus alludes to the indifference 

 manifested by his countrymen in regard to Tasman: — "We do 

 not know when he was born, when he went to India, or when he 

 returned. In our grand biographical dictionaries, where you 

 will find every puerile detail respecting such and such musty 

 savant, only known as a professor at some university or as 

 a quarrelsome skirmisher of the Republic of Letters, there is 

 no room, it seems, for the first navigator of his age." The 

 English have proposed of late to substitute a name of their own 

 for that of Van Diemen's Land ; but the appellation of Tas- 

 mania is beginning, as we have said, for evident reasons of pro- 

 priety to find a place upon modern charts and maps. 



