Page:Tasman A Forgotten Navigator.djvu/13

 on those exploring ships is now rather a mystery, and in our modern vessels has lapsed, owing to increased facilities in every port for obtaining supplies. Ship chandlers and butchers have usurped the place of the huntsmen, and now the name is only suggestive of the modern English hunting field.

As the result of this battue, a large number of wild hogs, and wild goats, were obtained, and equally divided between the two ships. The carpenters were also sent on shore to cut firewood and spare spars.

The ships required repairs. They were both old, and one was considerably rotten. Their spars and rigging, satisfactory enough in smooth seas and tropical weather, were not altogether fit for the desolate stormy billows of the Southern Ocean. We doubt if any of our present day sailors, even the most reckless, could be induced to sign articles in such vessels, bound on such a voyage. The opportunity was therefore taken to re-fit and repair them for possible rough weather.

Before proceeding further, I may mention that all the accounts of Tasman’s present voyage are derived from his own journal. A short abstract in the Dutch language was published at Amsterdam, thirty years afterwards. In later years partial translations were given in English and French collections of voyages. A copy of the journal and of the original sketches and charts were in 1776 discovered in London in a collection of old books, and came into the possession of Sir Joseph Banks. The manuscript of the English translation is now in the British Museum. In the beginning of last century, Captain Burney published the more important parts of this translation in his "History of Discovery in the South Sea"—a work now only found in dusty libraries or private collections. Tasman's memory has received scant honour in his own country, for it was not until 1860 that his full journal was printed at Amsterdam, and given to the world.

The entire narrative is given in the most dry-as-dust manner, in a language as grey and sombre as the Southern seas, and as uninteresting as the flats and dykes of his native Holland. Throughout the journal we cannot get a glimpse of Tasman's natural self. He is to our view a mere abstraction, and we can only judge him by his deeds. This voyage proved to be one of the most important of any which had been undertaken since the first circumnavigation of the globe, but we only know its results, and in language very much akin to that of a Gazetteer.

In this characteristic he is no unworthy representative of his great countryman, William the Silent. Tasman and his officers were apparently the most unimaginative of Dutchmen. He volunteers no description of Mauritius. No mention is made of its picturesque