Nearly at the end of 1642, Tasman, a sea captain in the service of the Dutch East India Company, sighted the western ranges of the Southern Alps.  He was four months out from Java, investigating the extent of New Holland, and in particular its possible continuation southward as a great Antarctic continent.  He had just discovered Tasmania, and was destined, ere returning home, to light upon Fiji and the Friendly Islands.  So true is it that the most striking discoveries are made by men who are searching for what they never find.  In clear weather the coast of Westland is a grand spectacle, and even through the dry, matter-of-fact entries of Tasman’s log we can see that it impressed him.  He notes that the mountains seemed lifted aloft in the air.  With his two ships, the small Heemskirk and tiny Zeehan, he began to coast cautiously northward, looking for an opening eastward, and noting the high, cloud-clapped, double range of mountains, and the emptiness of the steep desolate coast, where neither smoke nor men, ships nor boats, were to be seen.  He could not guess that hidden in this wilderness was a wealth of coal and gold as valuable as the riches of Java.  He seems to have regarded New Zealand simply as a lofty barrier across his path, to be passed at the first chance.  Groping along, he actually turned into the wide opening which, narrowing further east into Cook’s Strait, divides the North and South Islands.  He anchored in Golden Bay; but luck was against him.  First of all the natives of the bay paddled out to view his ships, and, falling on a boat’s crew, clubbed four out of seven of the men.  Tasman’s account—­which I take leave to doubt—­makes the attack senselessly wanton and unprovoked.

He tells how a fleet of canoes, each carrying from thirteen to seventeen men, hung about his vessels, and how the strongly-built, gruff-voiced natives, with yellowish-brown skins, and with white feathers stuck in their clubbed hair, refused all offers of intercourse.  Their attack on his boat as it was being pulled from the Zeehan to the Heemskirk was furious and sudden, and the crew seem to have been either unarmed or too panic-stricken to use their weapons.  Both ships at once opened a hot fire on the canoes, but hit nobody.  It was not until next day, when twenty-two canoes put out to attack them, that the Dutch marksmen after much more firing succeeded in hitting a native.  On his fall the canoes retired.  Satisfied with this Tasman took no vengeance and sailed away further into the strait.  Fierce north-westerly gales checked for days his northward progress.  The strait, it may be mentioned, is still playfully termed “the windpipe of the Pacific.”  One night Tasman held a council on board the Heemskirk, and suggested to the officers that the tide showed that an opening must exist to the east, for which they had better search.  But he did not persevere.  When next evening the north wind died away there came an easterly breeze, followed by a stiff southerly gale, which made him change his mind again.  So are discoveries missed.