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Historical Records of New Zealand South

[Introduction]

Sailing from the coast of Chili about the latitude of. 40deg, south, after a voyage of a month, Juan Fernandez in 1574 met the coast of a continent which seemed to be very fertile and well cultivated. The people were white, wore fine attire, and were of an amiable and peaceful disposition. Several large rivers fell into the sea, and altogether it appeared much better and richer than Peru. This country has been supposed by some to be New Zealand. This is the first reference or probable reference, that could have been made to New Zealand.— M.S. in Hobart Museum.

It was on the 14th of August, 1642, that the Dutch navigator, Abel Jansen Tasman, whose name now occupies so honourable a place in the history of nautical discovery, left the port of Batavia in the East Indies, on a voyage to the yet almost unentered regions of the Southern Pacific. He was despatched on this expedition by Anthony Van Dieman, the Governor of the Dutch possessions in that quarter of the globe; and had under his command the yacht Heemskirk and the Zeehan fly boat. The first reward of Tasman's research was the discovery of Van Dieman's Land. At this time, and for more than a century afterwards, the existence of a land extending round the South Pole, which was denominated the Terra Incognita Australis, was the favourite dream of geographers, and upon this Tasman imagined that he had now touched. "It is a very fine country," says he, "and we hope it is part of the Unknown South Continent." Twenty-six years before this, his countrymen, Scheuten and Le Maire, on penetrating into the Pacific through the strait which bears the name of the latter, had given that of Staten Island, or States Land, to the coast which appeared on their left, and which they were convinced belonged to the long-sought Polar Continent. Tasman accordingly gave the same name to the land which he had just discovered, under the impression that it might be only another part of the same extensive region. It happened, however, that within three months after this, Scheuten's Staten Land was found to be merely an inconsiderable island. Another Dutch navigator, Hendrick Brouwer, sailed round its eastern and southern coasts in making a voyage to Chili. Upon that discovery being announced, the country which Tasman had called Staten Land lost its first' name, and received instead, that of New Zealand, by which it has ever since been known. It was a considerable time after Tasman's voyage had been performed before any narrative of it was given to the world. An imperfect account at last appeared in Dutch, which was soon translated into English and French, and became very popular. But although more complete details of it were subsequently given, and especially by Valentyn, in his magnificent work on the possessions of the Dutch in the East Indies, published about a century ago, where we find the relation illustrated by copies of charts and views from Tasman's own journal, it was only very recently that the interesting document itself was rescued from oblivion. The public are indebted for its preservation to the late Sir Joseph. Banks, who, having purchased the manuscript, which was written in Dutch, had a translation of it into page 8English; and this, accompanied by accurate copies of the principal drawings in the original, has since been printed in the third volume of Admiral Burney's History of Discoveries in the South Sea.— Royal Society record

[Note.—Quiros, in 1606, named his discovery Austrilia del Espiritu Santo in honour of Philip of Austria. Purchas, in his English translation of Quiros' voyages, published 1625, called it Australia Incognita. Dalrymple, in his collection of voyages (1770), suggests the name, and Flinders revives it, in the introduction to his voyage, to Terra Australeas (1814).]

The prepossession in favour of a Southern Continent was inveterate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When Tasman made the west coast of New Zealand, he was confident that at last he had discovered the west side of the long-sought Terra Australia Incognita, So late as 1771 Alexander Dalrymple, Hydrographer to the Admiralty, and the jealous rival of Captain Cook, published a collection of voyages to the South Seas with the express object of demonstrating the existence of a huge Southern Continent. The only part of the Pacific then unexplored was that lying between New Zealand and Magellan Strait. This gave nearly the area by which, by elaborate calculations, Dalrymple showed was necessary to preserve the equilibrium of land between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. He therefore concluded that this space south of the equator must be almost entirely solid land. Within four years of the publication of Dalrymple's works, Cook, in his second voyage, by sailing over the site of the imaginary continent, finally dissipated the fable, and reduced this Terra Australis Incognita to the frozen mass within the Antarctic circle.—Notes re Abel Jansen Tasman in Hobart Museum Library.

In 1639 Anthony Van Dieman was Governor of Amsterdam. Tasman was on service which took him to the coast of China and Japan. Here reports were current of a golden island to the eastward. Tasman commanded one of the ships fitted out for the quest. After a long search over a wide area the venture was abandoned, with a loss of 50 of the 90 men composing the expedition. The Dutch were anxious at this time to discover the Great South Land, of which there had long been rumours. Already, before the expedition after the Golden Island, a Dutch ship found itself, by an error of latitude, off the coast of Western Australia, In a few years that coast was well known to Dutch mariners. Anthony Van Dieman at length fitted out an expedition of two ships to discover the Great South Land, with Tasman as commander, and Fischer, a famous pilot, second. These ships touched first at Mauritius, remaining there to refit and provision. They sailed and got down to latitude 49deg. They then fell off to latitude 42deg., and there struck the coast of Tasmania, somewhere near the entrance to Macquarie Harbour. Getting round to Bruny, they tried to make Adventure. Bay, but were driven out. Thereupon they named Frederick Henry Bay, now known as Blackmail's Bay. Sailing from: the coast they made New Zealand near Cook Strait, and had an encounter with the natives. New Zealand, Tasman held to be the veritable Great South Land of these Golden Islands.—J. B. Walker, in Royal Society of Tasmania,

Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand, 1642. Captain Cook and M. de Surville approached the country about the same time. Surville approached it in a bight he named Lauriston Bay, which Cook called Double Bay. Mount Egmont was named by the Frenchman, Mascarin Peak, in the neighbourhood of which he landed.—M.S. in Hobart Museum Library.

We completed our stores of wood and water; we took possession in the King's name of the island of New Zealand, which the aborigines called Eakenomaouve, and which Marion called France-Australe. Cook had called it on his chart Bay of Islands, but which we named Treachery Bay.—Crozet's Voyages.

page 9

Under date 11th March, 1760, Cook writes: —We had now sailed round the land which we discovered on the 5th, and which then did not appear to be joined to the main, which lay north of it, and being now come to the other side, which we supposed to be water, a bay or low land, it had the same appearance, but when I came to lay it on paper I saw no reason to suppose it to be an island. On the contrary, I was clearly of opinion it made part of the main. At noon the western extremity of the main bore N. 49 W., and the land we had seen in the morning S. 59 W., distant about five leagues. It lies in the latitude 46deg. 31min. S., longitude 192deg. 49min. W., and is nothing but a barren rock about a mile in circuit, remarkably high, and lies five leagues distant from the main. I named it after Dr Solander, and called it Solander Island. The shore of the main lies nearest E. by S. and W. by N., and forms a large open bay, in which there is no appearance of any harbour or shelter for shipping against S.W. and southerly winds. The surface of the country is broken into craggy hills, of a great height, on the summits of which there are patches of snow. It is not, however, wholly barren, for we could see wood, not only in the valleys, but upon the highest ground, yet we saw no appearance of its being inhabited.