INTRODUCTION. 
Accordingly, the following voyage was undertaken by command 
of His Majesty, in the year 1801 ; in a ship of 334 tons, which 
received the appropriate name of the Investigator ; and, besides the 
great objects of clearing up the doubt respecting the unity of these 
southern regions, and of opening therein fresh sources to commerce, 
and new ports to seamen, it was intended, that the voyage should 
contribute to the advancement of natural knowledge in various 
branches ; and that some parts of the neighbouring seas should be 
visited, wherein geography and navigation had still much to desire. 
The vast regions to which this voyage was principally directed, 
comprehend, in the western part, the early discoveries of the Dutch, 
under the name of New Holland ; and in the east, the coasts 
explored by British navigators, and named New South Wales. It 
has not, however, been unusual to apply the first appellation to both 
regions ; but to continue this, would be almost as great an injustice 
to the British nation, whose seamen have had so large a share in the 
discovery, as it would be to the Dutch, were New South Wales to 
be so extended. This appears to have been felt by a neighbouring, 
and even rival, nation ; whose writers commonly speak of these 
countries under the general term of Terres Australes. In fact, the 
original name, used by the Dutch themselves until some time after 
Tasman's second voyage, in 1644,, was Terra Australis, or Great 
South Land; and when it was displaced by New Holland, the new 
term was applied only to the parts lying westward of a meridian 
line, passing through Arnhem's Land on the north, and near the 
isles of St. Francis and St. Peter, on the south : all to the eastward, 
including the shores of the Gulph of Carpentaria, still remained as 
Terra Australis. This appears from a chart published by Thevenot, 
in 1663 ; which, he says, " was originally taken from that done in 
inlaid work, upon the pavement of the new Stadt-House at Amster- 
dam."* The same thing is to be inferred from the notes of Burgo- 
* " La carte que l'on a mise icy, tire sa premiere origine de celle que l'on a fait tailler 
