Abel Jansen Tasman sailed on a second voyage of discovery from Batavia in 1644, but no account of this voyage was ever made public, nor is it known to exist. _No chart bearing has name is now known, but there is little doubt that the north-west coast of New Holland was first explored by him ; and it is singular enough, that Dampier should say he bad Tasman's chart of it. Tasman is also supposed to have sailed round the Gulf of Carpentaria, an opinion which Captain Flinders considers to be strengthened, from the names of Tasman, of the go vernor-general, and of two of the council, who sign ed his instructions, being applied to places at the head of the gulf, as well as that of Maria, the go vernor's daughter, to whom Tasman is said to have been attached. Tasman had sailed, on a former voyage, from Batavia in 1642, for the Mauritius ; from hence steering south and eastward upon dis covery, he fell in with land, to which he gave the name of Anthony Van Dieman's Land, in honour of the governor-general, " our master," he adds, " who sent us out to make discoveries." The last voyage undertaken by the Dutch, for the discovery of Terra Australis, was in 1705, when three Dutch vessels were sent from Timor, " with orders to explore the north coast of New Holland better than it had been done before." The account, however, given by the President De Brosses is so vague and imperfect, very little satisfactory in formation is to be obtained from it. It is on the west coast that the Dutch appear to have been most suc cessful. In Tasman's instructions it is stated, that " in the years 1616, 1618, 1619, and 1622, the west coast of this great unknown southland, from 35° to .28° south latitude, was discovered by outward bound ships, and among them, by the ship Endragt." Dirk Hartog commanded this ship, and seems to have made the coast in latitude about 26i° south, and to have sailed northward, along it, to about 23° ; giving the name of Landt van Endragt to the coast so dis covered ; and that of Dirk Hartog's road (called af terwards Shark's Bay by Dampier) to an Inlet on the coast, a little to the southward of 25°. A plate of tin was found in 1697, and again seen by Baudin in 1801, on one of the Islands which forms the road stead, bearing an inscription that the ship Endragt of Amsterdam arrived there on the 25th October 1616. After this several outward bound ships fell in, by ac cident, with different parts of this coast.
The Dutch made little progress in any other part of the extensive coasts of New Holland. The in structions to Tasman say, " In the year 1627, the south coast of the Great South Land was accidentally discovered by the ship the Guldee Zeepard, outward bound from Fatherland, for the space of 1000 miles." From the circumstance of this ship having on board Pieter Nuyts, who was sent from Batavia as ambas sador to Japan, and afterwards appointed governor of Formosa, the name of Nuys' Land was given to this long range of coast.
The first English navigator who appears to have seen any part of New Holland, is the celebrat ed William Dampier, who, in his buccaneering voyage round the world, in January 1668, touched at the north-west coast, for the purposes of careening his vessel and procuring refreshments. He made
the land in latitude 16° 15', and ran along the shore to the north-east, till he came to a bay or opening fit for the purpose. In 1699, Dampier, a second time, visited the north-western coast of this Terra Australis, being now legitimately employed in mak ing discovery, in his Majesty's ship the Roebuck. Of this part of the coast little more is yet known than what has been described by Dampier.
It was left for our celebrated navigator, Captain Cook, to complete the grand outline of the filth continent of the world. The reign of George III. will ever be distinguished for the liberal principles on which voyages of discovery were undertaken, and their results communicated to the world. The En deavour was fitted out to observe, at Taheitfi, the transit of Venus over the sun's disk ; on her return, in 1770, Captain, then Lieutenant Cook, explored the whole east coast of the Terra Australis incognita, from Cape Howe to Cape York, not minutely enter ing into the details of every part, which would have been impossible, but laying down a correct general outline. "He reaped," says Captain Flinders, " the harvest of discovery, but the gleanings of the field remained to be gathered." In his passage through Endeavour's Strait, between Cape York and the Prince of Wales' Islands, he not only cleared up the doubt which till then existed, of the actual se paration of Terra Australis from New Guinea, but, by his accurate observations, enabled geographers to assign something like a true place to the former dis coveries of the Dutch in these parts.
In 1777 Captain Cook, in the Resolution and Dis covery, visited Van Dieman's Land ; but as Captain Furneaux, in his Majesty's ship Adventure had pre ceded him four years, and Tasman and Marion had examined the coast, little was here supposed to re main for discovery, except in detail. It was long subsequent to Furneaues visit, that Van Diemen's Land was ascertained to be an Island ; a discovery which may have been retarded by that officer having given an opinion, " that there is no strait between New Holland and Van Dieman's Land, but a very deep bay." The existence of such a strait was how ever still suspected, but the various attempts to ascer tain it, without success, by different navigators from both sides of the coast, seemed to have decided the question in the negative, when Mr Bass, surgeon of the Reliance,having observed, as he ran down the east coast in an open whale boat, that a heavy swell rolled in from the westward, was satisfied in his own mind that such a swell could proceed only from the great Southern Ocean. To ascertain whether this was the fact, was a point of great importance to the new co lony on the eastern coast ; and for this purpose Mr Flinders, together with Mr Bass, were sent on this service in a small decked boat at the end of three months, they returned to Port Jackson, with an interesting account of the survey of the coasts of Van Diemen a Land, which they had completely cir cumnavigated, and thus confirmed the conjecture of Mr Bass, whose name the strait deservedly bears.
The French are entitled to the honour of some par .