Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/130

 cii of the discovery of Carpentaria, the southern land lying between New Guinea and New Holland; but this is without any apparent foundation, inasmuch as they fix this discovery in the year 1628, in which year he returned to Holland, on the 12th of June, with five vessels richly laden, having sailed from Batavia on the 12th of November of the previous year." It should, moreover, be observed, that no evidence has been adduced of his having been on the coast at all, while there is every reason to believe that the exploration of the Gulf of Carpentaria was not only "achevé," as M. Eyriès suggests (p. 12, art. 1, vol. ii, of Nouvelles Annales des Voyages), by Tasman in 1644, but accomplished by that navigator for the first time. It might then be asked how comes it that Tasman, who had in both his voyages so largely complimented the governor Van Diemen, by giving his name and that of his daughter Maria, to whom he was attached, to various points of his discovery, should finally give the name of Carpenter to an important gulf and tract of country, when the governor bearing that name had left Batavia sixteen years before? The answer is readily given. The Governor and Company of Batavia formed a local administration under the presidency of the Company of the Indies at Amsterdam, which latter consisted of seventeen delegates from the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. In the year 1623, in which Carpenter commenced his governorship in the east, an event occurred in Amboina which threatened to produce a war between Holland and England. Some