Australia Twice Traversed | Page 3

to have
become the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown
regions has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the
discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of
emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years
elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land
existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met
in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not
been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a systematic
geographical object. The fact of the existence of such a land at the
European antipodes no doubt set many ardent and adventurous spirits
upon the search, but of their exploits and labours we know nothing.
The Dutch were the most eager in their attempts, although Torres, a
Spaniard, was, so far as we know, the first to pass in a voyage from the
West Coast of America to India, between the Indian or Malay Islands,
and the great continent to the south, hence we have Torres Straits. The
first authentic voyager, however, to our actual shores was Theodoric
Hertoge, subsequently known as Dirk Hartog--bound from Holland to

India. He arrived at the western coast between the years 1610 and 1616.
An island on the west coast bears his name: there he left a tin plate
nailed to a tree with the date of his visit and the name of his ship, the
Endragt, marked upon it. Not very long after Theodoric Hertoge, and
still to the western and north-western coasts, came Zeachern, Edels,
Nuitz, De Witt, and Pelsart, who was wrecked upon Houtman's
Albrolhos, or rocks named by Edels, in his ship the Leewin or Lion.
Cape Leewin is called after this vessel. Pelsart left two convicts on the
Australian coast in 1629. Carpenter was the next navigator, and all
these adventurers have indelibly affixed their names to portions of the
coast of the land they discovered. The next, and a greater than these, at
least greater in his navigating successes, was Abel Janz Tasman, in
1642. Tasman was instructed to inquire from the native inhabitants for
Pelsart's two convicts, and to bring them away with him, IF THEY
ENTREATED HIM; but they were never heard of again. Tasman sailed
round a great portion of the Australian coast, discovered what he
named Van Diemen's land, now Tasmania, and New Zealand. He it was
who called the whole, believing it to be one, New Holland, after the
land of his birth. Next we have Dampier, an English buccaneer--though
the name sounds very like Dutch; it was probably by chance only that
he and his roving crew visited these shores. Then came Wilhelm
Vlaming with three ships. God save the mark to call such things ships.
How the men performed the feats they did, wandering over vast and
unknown oceans, visiting unknown coasts with iron-bound shores,
beset with sunken reefs, subsisting on food not fit for human beings,
suffering from scurvy caused by salted diet and rotten biscuit, with a
short allowance of water, in torrid zones, and liable to be attacked and
killed by hostile natives, it is difficult for us to conceive. They suffered
all the hardships it is possible to imagine upon the sea, and for what?
for fame, for glory? That their names and achievements might be
handed down to us; and this seems to have been their only reward; for
there was no Geographical Society's medal in those days with its motto
to spur them on.
Vlaming was the discoverer of the Swan River, upon which the seaport
town of Fremantle and the picturesque city of Perth, in Western
Australia, now stand. This river he discovered in 1697, and he was the
first who saw Dirk Hartog's tin plate.

Dampier's report of the regions he had visited caused him to be sent out
again in 1710 by the British Government, and upon his return, all
previous doubts, if any existed, as to the reality of the existence of this
continent, were dispelled, and the position of its western shores was
well established. Dampier discovered a beautiful flower of the pea
family known as the Clianthus Dampierii. In 1845 Captain Sturt found
the same flower on his Central Australian expedition, and it is now
generally known as Sturt's Desert Pea, but it is properly named in its
botanical classification, after its original discoverer.
After Dampier's discoveries, something like sixty years elapsed before
Cook appeared upon the scene, and it was not until his return to
England that practical results seemed likely to accrue to any nation
from the far-off land. I shall not recapitulate Cook's voyages; the first
fitted out by the British Government was made in 1768,