VII.

(1616).  VOYAGE OF DE EENDRACHT UNDER COMMAND OF DIRK HARTOGS(ZOON).  DISCOVERY OF THE WEST-COAST OF AUSTRALIA IN 1616:  DIRK HARTOGS ISLAND AND -ROAD, LAND OF THE EENDRACHT OR EENDRACHTSLAND.

A.

Letter of Supercargo Cornelis Buysero at Bantam to the Managers of the East India Company at Amsterdam.

Worshipful, Wise, Provident, very Discreet Gentlemen,...

...The ship Eendracht [*], with which they had sailed from the Netherlands, after communicating at the Cabo sailed away from them so far southward as to come upon 6 various islands which were, however, found uninhabited [**]...

[* Commanded by Dirk Hartogs, or Hartogszoon.]

[* What “uninhabited islands” the ship Eendracht “came upon”, Buysero’s letter does not say.  Various authentic archival documents of 1618 and subsequent years, however, go to show that the land afterwards named Eendrachtsland or Land van de Eendracht, and the Dirk Hartogsreede (island) must have been discovered on this voyage.]

Bantam, this last day of August, A.D. 1617. 
Your Worships’ servant to command
CORNELIS BUYSERO [*]

[* Buysero was supercargo at Bantam (DE JONGE, Opkcornst, IV, p. 68,) and was therefore likely to be well informed as to the adventures of the ship, which had sailed from the Netherlands in January 1616, departed from the Cape of Good Hope in the last days of August, and had arrived in India in December of the same year, as appears from what Steven Van der Haghen, Governor of Amboyna, writes May 26, 1617:  “That in the month of December 1616, the ship Eendracht entered the narrows between Bima and the land of Endea near Guno Api (Goenoeng Api) in the south of Java” (Sapi Straits).]

B.

See infra Document No.  IX, of 1618.

It proves that as early as 1618 the name of Eendrachtsland was known in the Netherlands.

C.

The subjoined chart (reproduced on the original scale in Remarkable Maps, II, 4) was drawn by HESSEL GFRRITSZ, Cartographer in ordinary to the East India Company {Page 9} (Ress. of the “Heeren XVII”, March 21, 1619 and October 21, 1629).  He had accordingly at his disposal the official documents referring to this discovery.

[Map No. 4.  Caert van (Chart of) ’t Land van d’Eendracht Ao 1627 door HESSEL GERRITSZ]

D.

The interesting little folding chart, marked No. 5, is now in the possession of Jhr.  J. E. Huydecoper van Maarsseveen en Nigtevegt, LL.  D., at Utrecht.  It is bound up with the said gentleman’s copy of Abel Janszoon Tasman’s journal of his voyage of 1642-3 [*].  The chart clearly shows that at times in subsequent issues of certain charts the dates given in the first issue were retained, while numerous corrections were made in the chart itself.

[* See my Life and Labours of TASMAN, p. 69.]