signs of their explorations in the names of islands, bays, and capes.  Dirk Hartog, in the Endraaght, discovered that Land which is named after his ship, and the cape and roadstead named after himself, in 1616.  Jan Edels left his name upon the western coast in 1619; while, three years later, a ship named the Lioness or Leeuwin reached the most western point of the continent, to which its name is still attached.  Five years later, in 1627, De Nuyts coasted round the south coast of Australia; while in the same year a Dutch commander named Carpenter discovered and gave his name to the immense indentation still known as the Gulf of Carpentaria.

But still more important discoveries were made in 1642 by an expedition sent out from Batavia under ABEL JANSSEN TASMAN to investigate the real extent of the southern land.  After the voyages of the Leeuwin and De Nuyts it was seen that the southern coast of the new land trended to the east, instead of working round to the west, as would have been the case if Ptolemy’s views had been correct.  Tasman’s problem was to discover whether it was connected with the great southern land assumed to lie to the south of South America.  Tasman first sailed from Mauritius, and then directing his course to the south-east, going much more south than Cape Leeuwin, at last reached land in latitude 43.30 deg. and longitude 163.50 deg..  This he called Van Diemen’s Land, after the name of the Governor-General of Batavia, and it was assumed that this joined on to the land already discovered by De Nuyts.  Sailing farther to the eastward, Tasman came out into the open sea again, and thus appeared to prove that the newly discovered land was not connected with the great unknown continent round the south pole.

But he soon came across land which might possibly answer to that description, and he called it Staaten Land, in honour of the States-General of the Netherlands.  This was undoubtedly some part of New Zealand.  Still steering eastward, but with a more northerly trend, Tasman discovered several islands in the Pacific, and ultimately reached Batavia after touching on New Guinea.  His discoveries were a great advance on previous knowledge; he had at any rate reduced the possible dimensions of the unknown continent of the south within narrow limits, and his discoveries were justly inscribed upon the map of the world cut in stone upon the new Staathaus in Amsterdam, in which the name New Holland was given by order of the States-General to the western part of the “terra Australis.”  When England for a time became joined on to Holland under the rule of William III., William Dampier was despatched to New Holland to make further discoveries.  He retraced the explorations of the Dutch from Dirk Hartog’s Bay to New Guinea, and appears to have been the first European to have noticed the habits of the kangaroo; otherwise his voyage did not add much to geographical knowledge, though when he left the coasts of New Guinea he steered between New England and New Ireland.