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Rh map to the king of England in 1542, wherein a portion of the austral continent was delineated under the name of Great Java. Whatever foundation there may be for this anecdote, it is nevertheless certain that Australia virtually remained an unknown and mysterious territory until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Dutch and Spaniards began to press hard on each other's heels in the task of unveiling it, and the latter not only carried off the chief honours of discovery, but also published the earliest accounts of the "great south land" which can be considered authentic.

The name itself of Australia, which Flinders suggested should be applied collectively to the whole of the continent, was first invented by the Spanish admiral Quiròs as the designation of that part of it which he discovered in the year 1608. The earliest pioneers of Western Australia, however, seem to have been exclusively Dutch, for its entire seaboard is in old maps parcelled out into separate "lands," each of which bears the name of a Dutchman or of his ship. Tasman's Land, De Witt's Land, Endracht's Land, Edel's Land, the Land of Lyons (or Leeuwin), and Nuyt's Land encircled what is now called Western Australia in a connected chain from its northern boundary to its extreme south-east limit, each link having had a geographical existence before the middle of the seventeenth century whilst as yet people made voyages of discovery without chronometers, and in vessels that were sometimes not many sizes bigger than a modern coastguard cutter.

The river Swan became known to Europeans under the auspices of a Dutch commander, named William Vlaming,