New South Wales and discovered the island which he named after his patron Van Diemen’s land, but which is now very appropriately known as Tasmania.  Pressing on he reached New Zealand, which still bears the name that he gave to it, and sailed through the strait between the northern and southern islands, now Cook’s strait.  In the course of this great voyage he next discovered the Friendly or Tonga islands and the Fiji archipelago.  He reached Batavia in June, 1643, and in the following year he visited again the north of Australia and voyaged right round the Gulf of Carpentaria.  Even in a modern map of Australia Dutch names will be found scattered round certain portions of the coast of the island-continent, recording still, historically, the names of the early Dutch explorers, their patrons, ships and homes.  Along the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria may be seen Van Diemen river, gulf and cape; Abel Tasman, Van Alphen, Nassau and Staten rivers; capes Arnhem, Caron and Maria (after Francis Caron and Maria van Diemen) and Groote Eylandt.  In Tasmania, with many other names, may be found Frederick Henry bay and cape, Tasman’s peninsula and Tasman’s head and Maria island; while the wife of the governor-general is again commemorated, the northernmost point of New Zealand bearing the name of Maria van Diemen cape.

To Van Diemen belongs the credit of giving to the Dutch their first footing (1638) in the rich island of Ceylon, by concluding a treaty with the native prince of Kandy.  The Portuguese still possessed forts at Colombo, Galle, Negumbo and other places, but Galle and Negumbo were now taken by the Dutch, and gradually the whole island passed into their hands and became for a century and a half their richest possession in the East, next to Java.  On the Coromandel coast posts were also early established, and trade relations opened up with the Persians and Arabs.  At the time when the Treaty of Muenster gave to the United Provinces the legal title to that independence for which they had so long fought, and conceded to them the freedom to trade in the Indies, that trade was already theirs, safe-guarded by the fleets, the forts and the armed forces of the chartered company.  The governor-general at Batavia had become a powerful potentate in the Eastern seas; and a succession of bold and able men, by a policy at once prudent and aggressive, had in the course of a few decades organised a colonial empire.  It was a remarkable achievement for so small a country as the United Provinces, and it was destined to have a prolonged life.  The voyage round by the cape was long and hazardous, so Van Diemen in 1638 caused the island of Mauritius to be occupied as a refitting station; and in 1652 one of his successors (Reinierz) sent a body of colonists under Jan van Riebeck to form a settlement, which should be a harbour of refuge beneath the Table mountain at the Cape itself.  This was the beginning of the Cape colony.