View of mount Cockburn at the bottom of Cambridge gulf. 
Taken from the Gut. 
From a sketch by P.P.  King.  Published in May 1825 by John Murray, London.

View of the encampment in careening bay. 
Where the Mermaid was repaired. 
From a sketch by P.P.  King.  Published in May 1825 by John Murray, London.

Woodcut 5:  Huts of the natives at careening bay.

INTRODUCTION.

Preliminary remarks upon the discovery of the Terra australis incognita. 
Instructions for the execution of the voyage. 
Passage to new south Wales. 
Purchase and equipment of the Mermaid.

Nearly three centuries* have now elapsed since our first knowledge of the Great South Land, the Terra Australis Incognita of ancient geographers; and, until within the last century, comparatively little had been done towards making a minute exploration of its coasts:  during the seventeenth century several voyages were made by different Dutch navigators, from whom we have the first-recorded description of its shores; but from the jealous disposition of their East India Company, under whose orders these voyages were performed, the accounts of them were so concealed, and consequently lost or destroyed, that few particulars of a detailed nature have been handed down.**

(Footnote.  The late Rear-Admiral Burney, in his History of Discoveries in the South Sea, volume 1 page 380, describes a chart, dated 1542, drawn by Rotz, in which a coast is continued to the 28th degree of south latitude; and immediately below the 30th degree, there is the name of Coste des Herbaiges, answering by an extraordinary coincidence both in climate and in name to Botany Bay.).

(**Footnote.  In the voyages of Gautier Schouten, published at Amsterdam in 1708, duodecimo volume 1 page 41 et seq., there is the following curious account of the wreck of a ship on the coast of New Holland: 

“Il me semble que je ne dois pas omettre ici une histoire, de la certitude de laquelle on n’eut pas lieu de douter.  Des-que la nouvelle fut venue a Batavia [Anno 1659], que le vaisseau le Dragon, qui venoit de Hollande aux Indes, avoit fait naufrage sur les cotes d’une Terre Australe inconnue, on y envoia la flute la Bouee a la Veille, pour ramener ceux des gens de l’equipage qui auroient pu se sauver, et les efets qui auroient ete conservez.