Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/34

 on the west coast, in 1629, and on returning in a ship from Java to have found that mutiny and massacre had been rampant, and to have restored discipline by wholesale executions before sailing to Java. All performances of other navigators were eclipsed, however, by Tasman, who, in 1642, was commissioned to explore in the South Seas, and discovered Tasmania and New Zealand, but who, in his chart, represented New Guinea as joined to the South Land (Australia). From this time may be dated a more accurate knowledge of Australia,. It may be true that Portuguese sailors had seen parts of the coast in 1542. It is no doubt true that the Dutch (who founded their East India Company in 1602) received confidential reports from their sailors of discoveries made at various dates early in the seventeenth century; and it may be true that, for reasons of policy, they concealed the discoveries from the world. They paid a natural penalty. Paullum sepultæ distat inertiæ celata virtus. They might as well have made no discoveries.

After Tasman's great voyage other discoverers cruised among the islands of the Pacific, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries played their part, the celebrated William Dampier being one of them. First a common sailor, then overseer on an estate in Jamaica, a labourer among the logwood-cutters in Mexico, and a buccaneer amongst the wildest spirits of a wild time, he possessed intelligence and sense which have kept his narratives from oblivion. His first visit to Australia was in a buccaneering vessel which had been seized by the crew, who abandoned their captain at Mindanao, taking Dampier with them. In their wanderings they touched on the northern coast of