Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/268

 SOME PARTICULARS RELATING TO THE VOYAGE

OF WILLEM DE VLAMINGH TO NEW

HOLLAND IN 1G96.

Extracted from MS. Documents at the Hague.

Of this expedition, which owes its origin to the loss of the ship De Ridderschap van Hollandt, between the Cape of Good Hope and Batavia, in the year 1685, reports are to be found in various works, as in Witsen, Valentijn, the Historische Beschrijving der Reizen, perhaps also in some others. No coherent account, however, appears to exist, although we read in the last-mentioned work that a nar- rative of the voyage was published in 1701, at Amsterdam.^ The project originally formed was, that the expedition should set out from Batavia, and the Directors of the Coun- cil of the Seventeen write on this understanding in their dispatch of November 10th, 1695, to the Governor-General and Council of India ; but in the assembly of December 8th and 10th of that year'^ that plan was abandoned, and it was

^ This exceedingly scarce printed narrative, which had been zealously sought for by the editor for several years, and had eluded the search of previous writers, reached his hands at the very critical moment to admit of its being translated and inserted in its proper place iu the volume, the next in sequence to the present paper. Although of no great inter- est except as an original account of the voyage, it is important to know of what it consists, and it is the editor's grateful duty to state that it is solely to the zeal, intelligence, and kindness of Mr. Frederick Miiller, of Amsterdam, that he is indebted for the good fortune of procuring the use of the document.

^ Appendix I and II.