The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 | Page 4

great interest in the plan I submitted to them.[*]
[* See my Life of Tasman, p. 103, note 10.]
Meanwhile the Managing Board of the Royal Geographical Society of the Nether lands had resolved to publish a memorial volume on the occasion of the Society's twenty-fifth anniversary. Among the plans discussed by the Board was the idea of having the documents just referred to published at the expense of the Society. The name of jubilee publication could with complete justice be bestowed on a work having for its object once more to throw the most decided and fullest possible light on achievements of our forefathers in the 17th and 18th century, in a form that would appeal to foreigners no less than to native readers. An act of homage to our ancestors, therefore, a modest one certainly, but one inspired by the same feeling which in 1892 led Italy and the Iberian Peninsula to celebrate the memory of the discoverer of America, and in 1898 prompted the Portuguese to do homage to the navigator who first showed the world the sea-route to India.
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How imperfect and fragmentary even in our days is the information generally available concerning the part borne by the Netherlanders in the discovery of the fifth part of the world, may especially be seen from the works of foreigners. This, I think, must in the first place, though not, indeed, exclusively, be accounted for by the rarity of a working acquaintance with the Dutch tongue among foreign students. On this account the publication of the documents referred to would very imperfectly attain the object in view, unless accompanied by a careful translation of these pieces of evidence into one of the leading languages of Europe; and it stands to reason that in the case of the discovery of Australia the English language would naturally suggest itself as the most fitting medium of information[*]. So much to account for the bilingual character of the jubilee publication now offered to the reader.
[* The English translation is the work of Mr. C. Stoffel, of Nijmegen.]
Closely connected with this consideration is another circumstance which has influenced the mode of treatment followed in the preparation of this work. The defective acquaintance with the Dutch language of those who have made the history of the discovery of Australia the object of serious study, or even, in the case of some of them, their total ignorance of it, certainly appears to me one, nay even the most momentous of the causes of the incomplete knowledge of the subject we are discussing; but it cannot possibly be considered the only cause, if we remember that part of the documentary evidence proving the share of the Netherlanders in the discovery of Australia has already been given to the world through the medium of a leading European tongue.
In 1859 R. H. MAJOR brought out his well-known book _Early Voyages to Terra Australis, now called Australia_, containing translations of some of the archival pieces and of other documents pertaining to the subject. And though, from P. A. LEUPE'S work, entitled _De Reizen der Nederlanders naar het Juidland of Nzeuw-Holland in de 17e en 18e eeuw_, published in 1868, and from a book by L. C. D. Van Dijk, brought out in the same year in which MAJOR'S work appeared, and entitled _Twee togten naar de golf van Carpentaria_; though, I say, from these two books it became evident that MAJOR'S work was far from complete, still it cannot be denied that he had given a great deal, and what he had given, had in the English translation been made accessible also to those to whom Dutch was an unknown tongue. This circumstance could not but make itself felt in my treatment of the subject, since it was quite needless to print once more in their entirety various documents discussed by MAJOR. There was the less need for such republication in cases which would admit of the results of Dutch exploratory voyages being exhibited in the simplest and most effective way by the reproduction of charts made in the course of such voyages themselves: these charts sometimes speak more clearly to the reader than the circumstantial journals which usually, though not always, are of interest for our purpose only by specifying the route followed, the longitudes and latitudes taken, and the points touched at by the voyagers. These considerations have in some cases led me only to mention certain documents, without printing them in full, and the circumstance that my Tasman publication has been brought out in English, will sufficiently account for the absence from this work of the journal of Tasman's famous expedition of 1642/3.[*]
[* I would have the present work considered as forming one whole with my Tasman publication and with the fascicule of Remarkable Maps, prepared by me,