Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/322

 16G EXPEDITION OF THREE DUTCH SHIPS

weather, to remain for twenty days, until the second of March. A month later, namely, on the second of April, they explored the north-west corner of Van Diemen's land, without having so far observed anything remarkable on this voyage, except that for fifty or sixty miles straight north and south from this point, the land is elevated, and along the whole of this coast there was continually found from fifty to twenty, and fewer fathoms' water ; besides, that on the pas- sage from Timor, the compasses were on the sixth of March affected by the thunder and lightning to such a degree, that the north-end of the needle pointed due south, and was brought home in that position.

This point of Van Diemen's land having been thus ex- plored, they occupied themselves, from the second of April to the tAvelfth of July, in visiting the bays, head lands, islands, rivers, etc., to the best of their ability according to their instructions. But not being sufficiently provided with fresh provisions for so long a voyage, many men on board began to suffer and also to die, from severe sickness, principally fever, acute pains in the head and eyes, and above all, dropsy, so that they were compelled to resolve upon returning, and to direct their course to Banda ; the patsjallang however alone arrived there ; the fluit Vossenhosch, and the sloop Waijer, being forced by unfavourable weather and the w^eakness of the crew, to pass that government, and to hold on towards Macassar, as your nobilities will have already learnt by the papers from Banda and Macassar. The skipper, upper and under steersman, with most of the petty officers and sailors of the VossenJ)osch being already dead, and their incomplete journals alone having reached us, the new maps moreover, made by the direction of the skipper Martin van Delft, having been improperly detained at Macassar, we are not at present in a position to forward the same complete information on the subject, which the arrival of these maps would have enabled us to give, as they contain