Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/135

 Rh "A new discovery of Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World, by James Sadeur, a Frenchman, who, being cast there by a shipwreck, lived thirty-five years in that country, and gives a particular description of the manners, customs, religion, laws, studies and wars of those southern people, and of some animals peculiar to that place, with several other rarities. These memoirs were thought so curious, that they were kept secret in the closet of a late great minister of state, and never published till now, since his death. Translated from the French copy printed at Paris by publick authority, April 8. Imprimatur, Charles Hern, London. Printed for John Dunton, at the Raven, in the Poultry, 1693." The work is purely fictitious throughout.

The next Dutch voyage of which we have succeeded in finding an account, is that of Willem de Vlamingh, in 1696, which also owed its origin to the loss of a ship, the Ridderschap van Hollandt. This vessel had been missing from the time she had left the Cape of Good Hope in 1684 or 1685, and it was thought probable she might have been wrecked upon the great South Land, and that some of the crew might, even after this lapse of time, be still living. The commodore, Willem de Vlaming, who was going out to India with the Geelvink, Nyptang, and Wezel, was, therefore, ordered to make a search for them. The account of this voyage, which was printed at Amsterdam in 1701, 4to, is exceedingly scarce; and after many years enquiry, the editor