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

ship's
captain was staying at Bantam when the Duifken put to sea, and was
still there when the first reports of her adventures reached the said town.
Authentic documents of 1618, 1623, and 1644 are found to refer to her
voyage. Above all, the journal of a subsequent expedition, the one
commanded by Carstensz. in 1623, contains important particulars
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.]
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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