[* This expression indicates, that the before-mentioned places were not then included under the term NEW HOLLAND by Witsen:  he wrote in 1705.]

“In 19 deg. 35’ S. long. 134 deg. (about 120 deg., apparently), the inhabitants are very numerous, and threw stones at the boats sent by the Dutch to the shore.  They made fires and smoke all along the coast, which, it was conjectured, they did to give notice to their neighbours of strangers being upon the coast.  They appear to live very poorly; go naked; eat yams and other roots.”

DAMPIER. 1688.

The buccaneers with whom our celebrated navigator, WILLIAM DAMPIER, made a voyage round the world, came upon the north-west coast of Terra Australis, for the purposes of careening their vessel, and procuring refreshments.  They made the land in the latitude of 16 deg. 50’, due south from a shoal whose longitude is now known to be 1221/4 deg. east.  From thence, they ran along the shore, N. E. by E. twelve leagues, to a bay or opening, where a convenient place was found for their purpose.  Dampier’s description of the country and inhabitants of the place, where he remained from Jan. 5. to March 12., is contained in the account of his voyages, Vol.  I. page 462 to 470; and renders it unnecessary to do more than to mark its coincidence or disagreement with what is said, in the above note from Tasman, of the inhabitants and country near the same part of the coast.

Dampier agrees in the natives being “a naked, black people, with curly hair,” like that of the negroes; but he says they have “a piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four green boughs full of leaves, thrust under their girdle, to cover their nakedness.”  Also, “that the two fore teeth of the upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young:  neither have they any beards;” which circumstances are not mentioned in the note from Tasman.  Dampier did not see either bows or arrows amongst them; but says, “the men, at our first coming ashore, threatened us with their lances and swords; but they were frightened by firing one gun, which we did purposely to scar them.”  Of “their prows made of the bark of trees,” he saw nothing.  On the contrary, he “espied a drove of these men swimming from one island to another; for they have no boats, canoes, or bark logs.”  The English navigator is silent as to any dangers upon the twelve leagues of coast seen by him; but fully agrees in the scarcity of the vegetable productions, and in the circumstance of the natives using no houses.

VLAMING. 1696.

The relation of Willem DE VLAMING’S voyage to New Holland was published at Amsterdam in 1701; but not having been fortunate enough to procure it, I have had recourse to Valentyn, who, in his Description of Banda, has given what appears to be an abridgment of the relation.  What follows is conformable to the sense of the translation which Dr. L. Tiarks had the goodness to make for me; and the reasons for entering more into the particulars of this voyage than usual are, the apparent correctness of the observations, and that no account of them seems to have been published in the English language.*