Done in the Castle of Batavia, February 19, A.D. 1636.

(signed) ANTONIO VAN DIEMEN

[* Vis. together with the Instructions of Febr. 19 for Pool’s expedition to the Southland; see infra.]

[** To wit, with a view to the voyage just referred to.]

C.

Instructions for Pool, Febr. 19, 1636.

...Failing ulterior instructions, we desire you to sail as quickly as possible from Banda to Arnhems and Speultsland, situated between 9 and 13 degrees Southern Latitude, discovered A.D., 1623, as you may further see from the annexed chart [*]...

[* This, then, is the chart of the “coasts made A.D. 1623 by the yachts Pera and Arnhem”; for the “small map” handed to Pool, in the second place referred to in the above letter of Febr. 19, 1636, refers to surveyings of the west-coast of Australia by ships going from the Netherlands to India, and can therefore have nothing to do with the expedition of 1623.  Arnhems- and Van Speults-Land were accordingly discovered on the voyage of the Pera and the Arnhem.  Now the journal of the Pera shows that she did not discover them, so that we are led to the conclusion that Arnhems- and Van Speults Land were discovered by the ship Arnhem.]

{Page 48}

D.

Letter from the Governor-General and Councillors to the Managers of the E.I.C., December 28, 1636.

...[The ships of Pool’s expedition touched at] the native village of Taranga, situated at the south-western extremity of Arouw, and then sailed southward, hoping to be able to run on an easterly course in order to execute their orders; they, however, met with strong south-east winds and very high seas besides; in 11 degrees S.L. they discovered vast lands, to which they gave the names of Van Diemen’s and Maria’s Land, and which we suspect to be Arnhems or Speults’s islands, though they extend in another direction than the latter [*].

[* Cf. as regards the situation of Arnhem’s and Van Speult’s Lands my Lite of Tasman, pp. 101 and 102, and the charts there referred to.  Of the Nolpe-Dozy chart, of which there is question in note 4 on p. 102 of the book just mentioned, a reproduction will be found in Remarkable Maps, with a note by myself.]

The council of the said yachts, finding they could not run on an eastern course, after discovering and surveying Arnhem’s Land twenty miles to westward, resolved to steer their course northward again past the islands of Timor and Tenember, and thus return to Banda, where they arrived on July 7...

E.

Instructions for Tasman, 1644.