Page:Tasman A Forgotten Navigator.djvu/11

 For this purpose the two vessels were laden with all sorts of goods, under the care and management of a merchant or supercargo. It may be interesting to mention, parenthetically, that Tasman's monthly salary was 80 guilders, or, in English money, £6 13s. 4d. Two years later, this was increased to 100 guilders, or £9 6s. 8d.—not by any means an income commensurate with the importance of his position, even allowing for the greater value of money at that period.

Tasman, on taking command of the expedition, commences his journal, or log, as follows:—

"Journal of Description by me, Abel Jansen Tasman, of a voyage from Batavia for making discoveries of the unknown South land in the year 1642. May God Almighty be pleased to give His blessing to the voyage. Amen."

The modern skipper does not, as a rule, enter such a valediction in his log. and in the experience of many years I have never known one who expressed such sentiments verbally. This by the way.

At first we might imagine that Tasman must have been of an unusually religious nature. But this does not necessarily follow. It was an age which believed in the supernatural; when religion, dominated every phase of Politics, every condition of Art, and nearly every department of Literature. It coloured all personality, and permeated the life and thought of the people. It is, therefore, not surprising that this spiritual and religious temperament was often strangely blended with cruel matter of fact action.

Carlyle has lately pictured to us the true Cromwell as a Christian soldier and statesman, but the Irish nation has not forgiven the cruel massacre of Drogheda.

Sir John Hawkins, when engaged raiding with fire and sword the negroes for transport to the Spanish Main, had daily prayers on his vessels. When becalmed for twenty-eight days in the tropical, latitudes, he expected great mortality among the closely-packed slaves; "but," says his biographer, "the Almighty God, who never suffereth His elect to perish, sent us the ordinary trade-wind."

We read, also, that Drake's men partook of the Holy Communion in Magellan Straits, before commencing their career of pillage in the South Seas. Afterwards, when he had raided the Spanish galleon from the Philippines, he released the empty ship, and gave the unfortunate Spanish captain a letter of safe conduct, the religious sentiments of which would have done honour to any evangelist.

Tasman left Batavia in August, 1642, and entered the Indian Ocean by the Sunda Straits. He ran across from land to land, with a fresh south-east trade-wind on his port quarter, and arrived at Mauritius after a rapid passage of 22 days.