X1H 
North Coast.] INTRODUCTION. 
" the North-west Coast,) to run across, very near eastward, to Tasman. 
" complete the discovery of Arnhem's and Van Diemen's Lands; and 1644 ' 
" to ascertain perfectly, whether these lands are not one and the same 
" island." 
It is a great obstacle to tracing correctly the progress of early 
discovery in Terra Australis, that no account of this voyage of 
Tasman has ever been published ; nor is any such known to exist. 
But it seems to have been the general opinion, that he sailed round 
the Gulph of Carpentaria; and then westward, along Arnhem's and 
the northern Van Diemen's Lands ; and the form of these coasts in 
Thevenot's chart of 1663, and in those of most succeeding geo- 
graphers, even up to the end of the eighteenth century, is supposed 
to have resulted from this voyage. The opinion is strengthened by 
finding the names of Tasman, and of the governor-general and two 
of the council, who signed his instructions, applied to places at the 
head of the Gulph ; as is also that of Maria, the daughter of the 
governor, to whom our navigator is said to have been attached. In 
the notes, also, of Burgomaster Witsen, concerning the inhabitants 
of Nova Guinea and Hollandia Nova, as extracted by Mr. Dal- 
rymple ; Tasman is mentioned amongst those, from whom his 
information was drawn. 
The President De Brosses* gives, from the miscellaneous tracts Three Dutch 
of Nicolas Stray ck, printed at Amsterdam, 1753, the following 
account of another, and last voyage of the Dutch, for the discovery 
of the North Coast. 
" March 1, 1705, three Dutch vessels were sent from Timor, with 
" order to explore the north coast of New Holland, better than it 
" na d before been done. They carefully examined the coasts, sand 
" banks, and reefs. In their route to it, they did not meet with any 
" land, but only some rocks above water, in 11 0 52' south latitude:" 
(probably the south part of the great Sahul Bank; which, according 
to captain Peter Hey wood, who saw it in 1801, lies in 11 0 40'.) 
* Hist, des Nav. aux Terres Just, Tome I. page 439. 
