I 
INTRODUCTION. 
{Prior Discoveries. 
Haktog. Endragt, outward-bound from Holland to India. He appears to 
l616 ' have first seen the West Coast in latitude about 26°^ south ; and to 
have sailed northward along it, to about 23 0 ; giving the name 
Landt de Endragt, to the country so discovered. An important 
part of his discovery was Dirk Hartog's Road ( at the entrance of a 
sound afterwards called Shark's Bay, by Dampier), lying a little 
south of 25 0 . Upon one of the islands which form the road there 
was found, first in 1697, and afterwards in 1801, a plate of tin, 
bearing the following inscription. 
" Anno 1616, the 25th of October arrived here the ship Endragt 
" of Amsterdam ; the first merchant Gillis Miebais of Luik, Dirk 
" Hartog of Amsterdam, captain. They sailed from hence for 
u Bantam, the 27th D°." On the lower part, as far as could be 
distinguished in 1697, was cut with a knife, " The under merchant 
" Jan Stins; chief mate Pieter Dookus of Bill. A°. 1616." 
The Mauritius, another outward-bound ship, appears to have 
made some further discovery upon the West Coast, in July 1618, 
particularly of Willem's River, near the North-west Cape; but no 
further particulars are known. 
Ebel. In Campbell's edition of Harris' Voyages (p. 325), it is said, 
1619. {t ^ e next y ear Land of Edel was found, and received its 
" name from the discoverer." The president De Brosses says 
nearly the same thing (Tome I. p. 432); whence, combining this 
with the Dutch recital and the chart of Eessel Gerritz, it should 
appear that J. de Edel commanded an outward-bound ship ; and, 
in July 1619, accidentally fell in with that part of the West Coast 
to which his name is applied. The extent of Edel's discovery 
appears, from Thevenot's chart, to have been from about the latitude 
29 0 , northward to 26*^°, where the Land of Endragt commences; 
but in a chart of this coast, by Van Keulen, the name is extended 
southward to 32 0 20', past the island Rottenest, which, according 
