Discovery.

New Zealand was discovered by Abel Jansen Tasman, a Dutch Navigator, who, having sailed from Bavaria on the 14th of August, 1642, in the yacht Heemskirk, gives the first authentic account of having sighted the Colony. Being accompanied on his voyage of discovery by the Sea-Hen, fly-boat, and having called at Mauritius, Tasmania was first found and named Van Diemen's land, in honour of Anthony Van Diemen, Governor of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies. From Tasmania he sailed in an easterly direction, and on the 13th December, 1642, sighted the West coast of the South Island, which he then described as a " high mountainous country, which is at present marked on the charts as New Zealand." Tasman subsequently sailed along the coast, and anchored in a bay, which he named Murderers' (since page 9 called Massacre, and more recently Golden) Bay, in consequence of an unprovoked attack on a boat's crew by the natives, and the murder of four white men. He then sailed along the West Coast of the North Island, and named the North Western extremity Cape Maria Van Diemen. Thence sighting the Islands of Three Kings, he took his final departure without having set foot on the country, being disgusted at what appeared to him a hostile and poverty-stricken land.