The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 | Page 7

respecting the voyage of his predecessors in 1605-6. [*]
[* See pp. 28, 42, 43, 45 infra. I trust that these data will go far to remove COLLINGRIDGE'S doubt (Discovery p. 245) as to whether the ship Duifken sailed farther southward than 8° 15'.]
On the basis of these data we may safely take for granted the following points. The ship Duifken struck the south-west coast of New Guinea in about 5° S. Lat., ran along this coast on a south-east course [*], and sailed past the narrows now known as Torres Strait. Did Willem Jansz. look upon these narrows as an open strait, or did he take them to be a bay only? My answer is, that most probably he was content to leave this point altogether undecided; seeing that Carstensz. and his men in 1623 thought to find an "open passage" on the strength of information given by a chart with which they had been furnished. [**] This "open passage" can hardly refer to anything else than Torres Strait. But in that case it is clear that Jansz. cannot have solved the problem, but must have left it a moot point. At all events he sailed past the strait, through which a few months after him Luiz Vaez de Torres sailed from east to west.
[* As regards the names given on this expedition to various parts of this coast, see my Life of Tasman, pp. 90-91, and chart No. 3 on p. 5 infra.]
[** See pp. 47, 66 infra.]
{Page vi}
Jansz. next surveyed the east-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria as far as about 13° 45'. To this point, the farthest reached by him, he gave the name of Kaap-Keerweer [Cape Turn-again]. That skipper Jansz. did not solve the problem of the existence or non-existence of an open passage between New Guinea and the land afterwards visited by him, is also proved by the circumstance that even after his time the east-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria was also called New Guinea by the Netherlanders. Indeed, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the Dutch discoverers continued in error regarding this point. They felt occasional doubts on this head [*] it is true, but these doubts were not removed.
[* See inter alia a report of a well-known functionary of the E.I.C., G. E. RUMPHUS, dated after 1685 in LEUPE Nieuw-Guinea, p. 86: "The Drooge bocht [shallow bay], where Nova-Guinea is surmised to be cut off from the rest of the Southland by a passage opening into the great South-Sea, though our men have been unable to pass through it owing to the shallows, so that it remains uncertain whether this strait is open on the other side."]
The Managers of the E.I.C. did not remain content with this first attempt to obtain more light [*] as regards these regions situated to eastward, the Southland-Nova Guinea as they styled it, using an appellation characteristic of their degree of knowledge concerning it. But it was not before 1623 that another voyage was undertaken that added to the knowledge about the Gulf of Carpentaria: I mean the voyage of the ships Pera and Arnhem, commanded by Jan Carstensz. and Willem Joosten van Colstjor or Van Coolsteerdt. [**]
[* See pp. 6, 7-8, 13 and note 2 infra.]
[** See the Documents under No. XIV (pp. 21 ff.), and especially chart No. 7 on p. 46.]
On this occasion, too, the south-west coast of New Guinea was first touched at, after which the ships ran on on an eastern course. Torres Strait was again left alongside, and mistaken for a Drooge bocht,[*] "into which they had sailed as into a trap," and the error of New Guinea and the present Australia constituting one unbroken whole, was in this way perpetuated. The line of the east-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, "the land of Nova Guinea", was then followed up to about 17° 8' (Staten river), whence the return-voyage was undertaken [**]. Along this coast various names were conferred. [***]
[* As regards the attempts to survey and explore this shallow water, see infra pp. 33-34]
[** See p. 37 below.]
[*** As regards this, see especially the chart on p. 46.--Cf. my Life of Tasman, pp. 99-100.]
In the course of the same expedition discovery was also made of Arnhemsland on the west-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and almost certainly also of the so-called Groote Eyland or Van der Lijns island (Van Speultsland) [*] The whole of the southern part of the gulf remained, however, unvisited.
[* See my Life of Tasman, pp. 101-102; and pp. 47-48 below.]
{Page vii}
The honour of having first explored this part of the gulf in his second famous voyage of 1644 is due to our countryman Abel Janszoon Tasman together with Frans Jacobszoon Visscher and his other courageous coadjutors in the ships Limmen Zeemeeuw and Brak. [*] Abel Tasman's