THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA.
A VERY complete and singularly interesting account of The Discovery of Australia has been written by Professor Arnold Wood, of the University of Sydney (Macmillan, 25s. net). He explains clearly the theories of the early geographers, who believed in the existence of a Great South Land, but he is con- vinced that the Spaniards had no actual knowledge of Australia. Quires in 1606 found the New Hebrides ; his comrade Torres somehow penetrated through the dangerous channel named after him, between Northern Australia and New Guinea, without realizing that he had sighted the Australian mainland.. Quiros's discovery was remembered, but Torres's achievement was misunderstood and ignored. The skip, er of a Dutch pinnace, the Duyfhen,' who sailed from Bantam in November, 1605, to explore New Guinea, was the first European who is known to have seen the Australian coast, near Care York ; some of his crew were killed by the " wild, cruel, black savages." In 1611 the Dutch East Indiamen bound for Batavia began to sail due east from the Cape, instead of taking the Portuguese route by way of Madagascar. The new route was found to be less than half as long as the old. It made the discovery of Australia inevitable for any Indiaman that sailed a little further east than was necessary before turning northward for Java. Dirck Hartog, in the Eendracht,' in October, 1616, first sighted the West Australian coast ; he recorded his discovery on a pewter dish, fixed on a pole, which was found eighty years later and brought home to Amsterdam, and is preserved in the Amsterdam Museum to this day. Tasman, in 1642-44, sailed along the south coast, discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and then, making due east, was the first to sight New Zealand, which he called Staten Land. But the Dutch East India Company, thinking more of trade than of exploration, and convinced that Australia was a barren desert, made no effort to complete these discoveries.
Dampier, at the close of the seventeenth century, sailed along the West Australian coast and gave it up as worthless. It was reserved for Captain Cook, in 1769, to circumnavigate New Zealand, proving that it was not part of an immense Southern continent as the theorists supposed, and then in the following year to sail along the whole eastern coast of Australia, which he declared to be no desert but a fertile land, if " planted and cultivated by the hands of industry." Professor Wood pays a just tribute to Cook as a great sailor and a great explorer ; he did thoroughly well whatever he undertook, and his first voyage was epoeh-making in the annals of geography as well as in the history of the British Empire. Cook was fortunate in having with him the enthusiastic and influential man of science, Joseph Banks ; though, as the author notes, Banks was less favourably impressed with New South Wales when he - was there than he professed to be after his return to England. Banks's warm praise of the new land undoubtedly induced Pitt to send the first party to Botany Bay in 1787. Professor Wood concludes an excellent book with a chapter on Flinders, who completed the discovery of the southern coast of Australia, and on Bass, who proved that Tasmania was an island. The book is well supplied with maps and with portraits.
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