Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/127

 Rh naked black people, with curly hair: malicious and cruel, using for arms bows and arrows, hazeygayes and kalawayes. They once came to the number of fifty, double armed, dividing themselves into two parties, intending to have surprised the Dutch, who had landed twenty-five men; but the firing of the guns frightened them so much that they took to flight. Their canoes are made of the bark of trees: their coast is dangerous: there is but little vegetation: the people have no houses."

"In 19 degrees, 35 minutes S., longitude 134 degrees (about 120 degrees apparently), the inhabitants are very numerous, and threw stones at the boats sent by the Dutch to the shore. They made fires and smoke all along the coast, which it was conjectured they did to give notice to their neighbours of strangers being upon the coast. They appear to live very poorly; go naked; eat yams and other roots."

This fragment of description is meagre enough; but it is all that we can boast of possessing. It is further remarkable that those who have spoken of the part of the coast visited by Tasman in this voyage, have led their readers into a misconception by attributing the discovery of the Gulf of Carpentaria to Carpenter, and of the northern Van Diemen's Land to the governor so named. So soon after the voyage as the year 1663, we find Thevenot printing as follows: "We shall, in due course, give the voyages of Carpenter and Diemen, to whom is due the principal honour of this discovery. Van Diemen brought back gold, porcelain, and a thousand other articles of