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

whether they
would eventually undertake such a publication, and I need hardly add
that these gentlemen, to whom the historical study of Dutch discovery
has repeatedly been so largely indebted, evinced 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