Iviii 
INTRODUCTION. 
[Prior Discoveries, 
Damme*. Dampier did not see either bows or arrows amongst them ; but says, 
1688 ' " the men, at our first coming ashore, threatened us with their lances 
" and swords ; but they were frightened by firing one gun, which 
" we did purposely to scar them." Of " their prows made of the 
" bark of trees," he saw nothing. On the contrary, he " espied a 
" drove of these men swimming from one island to another; for 
" they have no boats, canoes, or bark logs." The English navigator is 
silent as to any dangers upon the twelve leagues of coast seen by 
him ; but fully agrees in the scarcity of the vegetable productions, 
and in the circumstance of the natives using no houses. 
Vlaming. The relation of Willem de Vlaming's voyage to New Holland 
1696 ' was published at Amsterdam in 1701 ; but not having been fortu- 
nate enough to procure it, I have had recourse to Valentyn, who, in 
his Description of Banda, has given what appears to be an abridg- 
ment of the relation. What follows is conformable to the sense of 
the translation which Dr. L. Tiarks had the goodness to make for 
me ; and the reasons for entering more into the particulars of this 
voyage than usual are, the apparent correctness of the observations, 
and that no account of them seems to have been published in the 
English language.* 
A Dutch ship, called the Ridderschap , having been missing from 
the time she had left the Cape of Good Hope, in 1684 or 1685, it 
was thought probable she might have been wrecked upon the Great 
South Land, and that some of the crew might (in 1696) be still 
living. Accordingly, the commodore Willem de Vlaming, who was 
going out to India with the Geelvinh, Nyptang, and Wezel, was 
ordered to make a search for them. 
On Dec. 28, the ships got soundings in 4,8 fathoms, coral bottom ; 
in latitude 31 0 53', and longitude 133 0 44' (east, apparently, from the 
* The Abbe, Prtvost in his Hist. gen. des Voyages, Tome XVI. (a la Haye) p. 79 — 
81, has given some account of Vlaming's voyage in French; but the observations on the 
coast between Shark's Bay and Willem's River are there wholly omitted. 
