A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland | Page 3

prosecute the same
designs hereafter; to whom it might be serviceable to have so much of
their work done to their hands; which they might advance and perfect
by their own repeated experiences. As there is no work of this kind
brought to perfection at once I intended especially to observe what

inhabitants I should meet with, and to try to win them over to
somewhat of traffic and useful intercourse, as there might be
commodities among any of them that might be fit for trade or
manufacture, or any found in which they might be employed. Though
as to the New Hollanders hereabouts, by the experience I had had of
their neighbours formerly, I expected no great matters from them.
With such views as these I set out at first from England; and would,
according to the method I proposed formerly, have gone westward
through the Magellanic Strait, or round Tierra del Fuego rather, that I
might have begun my discoveries upon the eastern and least known
side of the Terra Australis. But that way it was not possible for me to
go by reason of the time of year in which I came out; for I must have
been compassing the south of America in a very high latitude in the
depth of the winter there. I was therefore necessitated to go eastward by
the Cape of Good Hope; and when I should be past it it was requisite I
should keep in a pretty high latitude, to avoid the general tradewinds
that would be against me, and to have the benefit of the variable winds:
by all which I was in a manner unavoidably determined to fall in first
with those parts of New Holland I have hitherto been describing. For
should it be asked why at my first making that shore I did not coast it to
the southward, and that way try to get round to the east of New Holland
and New Guinea; I confess I was not for spending my time more than
was necessary in the higher latitudes; as knowing that the land there
could not be so well worth the discovering as the parts that lay nearer
the Line and more directly under the sun. Besides, at the time when I
should come first on New Holland, which was early in the spring, I
must, had I stood southward, have had for some time a great deal of
winter weather, increasing in severity, though not in time, and in a
place altogether unknown; which my men, who were heartless enough
to the voyage at best, would never have borne after so long a run as
from Brazil hither.
For these reasons therefore I chose to coast along to the northward, and
so to the east, and so thought to come round by the south of Terra
Australis in my return back, which should be in the summer season
there: and this passage back also I now thought I might possibly be able

to shorten, should it appear, at my getting to the east coast of New
Guinea, that there is a channel there coming out into these seas, as I
now suspected, near Rosemary Island: unless the high tides and great
indraught thereabout should be occasioned by the mouth of some large
river; which has often low lands on each side of its outlet, and many
islands and shoals lying at its entrance. But I rather thought it a channel
or strait than a river: and I was afterwards confirmed in this opinion
when, by coasting New Guinea, I found that other parts of this great
tract of Terra Australis, which had hitherto been represented as the
shore of a continent, were certainly islands; and it is probably the same
with New Holland: though, for reasons I shall afterwards show, I could
not return by the way I proposed to myself to fix the discovery. All that
I had now seen from the latitude of 27 degrees south to 25, which is
Shark's Bay; and again from thence to Rosemary Islands and about the
latitude of 20; seems to be nothing but ranges of pretty large islands
against the sea, whatever might be behind them to the eastward,
whether sea or land, continent or islands.
But to proceed with my voyage. Though the land I had seen as yet was
not very inviting, being but barren towards the sea, and affording me
neither fresh water nor any great store of other refreshments, nor so
much as a fit place for careening; yet I stood out to sea again with
thoughts of coasting still alongshore (as near as I could) to the
north-eastward, for the further discovery of it: persuading myself that at
least the place I anchored at in my voyage round the