xiv 
INTRODUCTION. 
[Prior Discoveries. 
rce Dutch " They saw the west coast of New Holland 4 0 to the eastward of 
Vessels. (l ^ east po j nt 0 f Timor. From thence they continued their route 
1705. * 
« towards the north ; and passed a point, off which lies a bank of 
" sand above water, in length more than five German miles of fifteen 
" to a degree. After which, they made sail to the east, along the 
" coast of New Holland ; observing every thing with care, until 
" they came to a gulph, the head of which they did not quite reach. 
« I (Struyck) have seen a chart made of these parts." 
What is here called the West, must have been the North-west 
Coast ; which the vessels appear to have made somewhat to the 
south of the western Cape Van Diemen. The point which they 
passed, was probably this same Cape itself ; and in a chart, published 
by Mr. Dalrymple, Aug. 27, 1783, from a Dutch manuscript (pos- 
sibly a copy of that which Struyck had seen), a shoal, of thirty 
geographic miles in length, is marked as running off, from it ; but 
incorrectly, according to Mr. M c . Cluer. The gulph here mentioned, 
was probably a deep bay in Arnhem's Land ; for had it been the 
Gulph of Carpentaria, some particular mention of the great change 
in the direction of the coast, would, doubtless, have been made. 
From this imperfect account of the voyage of these three vessels, 
very little satisfactory information is obtained ; and this, with some 
few exceptions, is the case with all the accounts of the early Dutch 
discoveries ; and has usually been attributed to the monopolizing 
spirit of their East-India Company, which induced it to keep secret, 
or to destroy, the journals. 
cook. The north coast of Terra Australis does not appear to have been 
l770 ' seen by any succeeding navigator, until the year 1 770 ; when our 
celebrated captain James Cook passed through Endeavour's Strait, 
between Cape York and the Prince of Wales' Islands ; and besides 
clearing up the doubt which, till then, existed, of the actual separa- 
tion of Terra Australis from New Guinea, his more accurate observa- 
tions enabled geographers to assign something like a true place to 
the former discoveries of the Dutch, in these parts. Captain Cook 
