The Dutch were, therefore, the first, so far as we can at present ascertain, who made any observations on this part of Australasia, which, indeed, their es tablishments in India, and frequent voyages thither, enabled them the more readily to do. Accord ingly we find, that it was in such voyages commonly that they became acquainted with the coast. In the year 1696, Vlaming sailed from the Texel in quest of a Dutch East Indiaman, supposed' to have been lost somewhere on the coast of New Holland, du ring a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to Ba tavia. In December of the same year he made the coast in 31° 58' south latitude, and 130° 13' east longitude. He landed with a number of men, and saw some natives at a distance,.of a middle stature, quite black, and entirely naked, with whom the Dutch seem to have had no immediate intercourse. Prosecuting his search, Vlaming found the tin plate before alluded to, left by his countrymen in 1616, nailed to a post, and added the following inscrip tion, as the French found it in 1801 : " 1697, on the 4th of February, the ship Geelvink of Amsterdam arrived here ; Wilhelm de Vlaming, captain com mandant. ; John Bremen of Copenhagen, assistant ; Michael Bloem Van Estight of Bremen, assistant ; the dogger Nyetangh, Captain Gerrit Colaart of Amsterdam ; 1 heodore Hiermanns, of the same place, assistant ; first pilot, Gerrit Gerritzen of Bre men : the galley Net Weseltje, Cornelius de Vlaming of Vlielandt, commander ; Coert Gerritzen of Bre men, pilot. Our fleet sails hence, leaving the south ern territories, for Batavia." The tin plate was dis covered half buried in sand, attached to the remains of a wooden post, in 1801. The inscriptions were carefully copied, and the plate replaced on the north point of Dirk Hartighs Isle, where it was found, a new post having been erected for it.
Omitting other expeditions of less importance, we ought not to overlook the voyages of William Dam pier, one of the most intelligent navigators who ever sailed from Britain. He twice revisited the Austral asian regions, and landed on the coast of New Hol land. In his first voyage he remained on it two months, from January 1688, and gives a deplorable picture of the country. It was flat, low, and sandy, and afforded no fresh water, except what was dug out of wells. Few fishes inhabited the sea; and the traces of no quadruped, excepting one, were seen. Scarcely any birds larger than a blackbird appeared ; and he was unsuccesSful in searching for fruits. The natives were the most miserable creatures in the uni verse, almost stark naked, and without houses or covering. They had no religion or government, and cohabited promiscuously. Dampier describes the savages as of extreme ugliness and, in his second voyage in 1699, speaking of their custom of paint ing themselves, he thus expresses himself regarding an individual : " This, his painting, adding much to his natural deformity, for they all of them are of the most unpleasant look, and the worst features of any people ever I saw, though I have seen a great variety of savages.". He observes, that New Holland is a very large tract of land, but it was not then fully determined whether a continent or an island ; he was certain, however, that it joined neither Asia, Africa, nor America.
The unfavourable appearances exhibited by the greater part of the coast of NewHolland, and the islands in its vicinity, restrained those nations, to which they were best known, from repeating their voyages towards them. But, while little progress had been made in ex ploring this past of Australasia, some others had oc casionally been visited ; and of the whole, it is not unlikely that the islands of Papua, or New Guinea, were the first discovered by navigators. A Portu guese officer, Don Jorge de Menezes, in a voyage from Malacca to the Molucca Islands; to the com mand of which he had been appointed, wintered in a port immediately north, it would seem, of the great land of Papua, in 1526. This port was probably in one of the islands close to it. Other islands are men tioned, and all are said to be inhabited by the Papuans, or Papoos, the name by which the natives are now known.
A squadron, fitted out in the year 1526, for the purpose of discovering spice islands in the South Seas, sailed from Mexico, under the command of Alvarez de Saavedra, a Spaniard. A long time seems to have been occupied in this search ; in re turning from which, Saavedra discovered the land of Papua, or the adjacent islands. Believing that the country which he saw abounded in gold, he called it the Isla del Oro ; it afterwards received the name of New Guinea, not from this source, but, as some af firm, from navigators thinking it opposite to Guinea, on the coast of Africa, or float a supposed resem blance between the inhabitants of the two countries. Saavedra found them black, with short curled hair, and going naked. Their civilization even then far exceeded the state of most of the present natives of Australasia, for they had not only swords of iron, but Other arms of the same metal. Saavedra, after remaining a month here, ran along the same land 100 leagues to the southward. Some canoes from an island then attacked his ship, in consequence of which he took three of the people prisoners. Next year, 1529, lie brought them back in another voyage. Whenever they recognised their native island, two leapt overboard, and swam away ; the third, more tractable, engaged to explain the pacific views of the Spaniards to his countrymen. As the ship ap proached the shore, he also leapt overboard ; and the Spaniards had the mortification to see him killed while still in the water. If we can trust the ac counts of this second voyage, Saavedra traversed more of the coast of P4ua than any subsequent na vigator has done. Other Spaniards also fell in with part of the Papuan territories in 1537 or 153S, where, it appears, they lost a vessel, and were made prisoners by the natives. Some of them were carried thence to the Moluccas, and there ransomed. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos ranged along the same coasts in 1513, when, ignorant of its having before been visited by Europeans, he conferred upon it the name of New Guinea. The country had an inviting appearance ; and he anchored in several ports, where he ,ob tained wood and water. Previous to reaching New Guinea, he fell in with an archipelago of islands, among which, it has been conjectured, the Spanish vessel was lost ; we should consider it, however, to have been farther to the east. In 1616, James he Maire and William Schouten, both skilful navigators, in a voyage from the east, approached the coast of Papua. They anchored in a bay, where two villages stood on the shore, and had different interviews with the natives, from whom they obtained small quan tities of provisions. They were remarkably diseased, not one being seen without lameness, blindness, Or some other personal defect, which Le Maire and Schouten ascribed to the unhealthiness of the cli mate, as their 'houses stood eight or nine feet above the ground on posts. "'these people,",he observes, 44 arc the true Papoos, with black, short, and curled hair, wearing rings in their ears and noses, and neck lades of hogs tusks : a wild, strange, and absurd people, curious to see every thing, and active as monkeys." Alvaro Mendana probably saw some of the islands near Papua, in 1595 ; also Tasman in 1612, and Dampier in 1699. Geographers have sup posed; that what is described by both these authors as Papua, was in fact New Britain ; and that Dam pier, in particular, never landed on that island_ New Britain was .certainly discovered by this latter navigator in 1699. Ranging along the coast to the most eastern part of New Guinea, he found it inter rupted, and a lesser division, being an island, he call ed it New Britain. It may be productive of rich com modities, he says, and the natives might easily be brought to commerce. • Owing to inconveniences which are specified by him, his voyage of discovery was soon abandoned. If New Ireland was known in the seventeenth century, it had then been very little explored. Mr Dalrymple, if we rightly understand his arguments, conceived the New Britain of Dam pier to be the same as the Solomon Islands.