Nonfiction · 1886
Early Australian Voyages
Pelsart, Tasman, Dampier
Three first-hand accounts of the European approach to Australia, printed together. Francisco Pelsart's is the earliest and the worst: the wreck of the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia on the Abrolhos off the west coast in 1629, the mutiny and massacre committed on the survivors while he went for help, and the executions that followed. Abel Tasman's journal of 1642 records the voyage on which he found Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand and sailed round the continent without ever seeing its east coast. William Dampier's is the account of an English buccaneer turned naturalist who landed on the north-west coast in 1688 and again in 1699, and wrote the first English description of the country, its plants, its animals and its people.
The three narratives were collected by John Pinkerton in his great early-nineteenth-century compilation of voyages, and this volume was edited from it by Henry Morley for Cassell's National Library in 1886.
This Bibliomancer edition presents all three narratives complete, with Morley's introduction.
Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter I — The Occasion and Design of This Voyage
- Chapter II — Captain Tasman Sails from Batavia, August 14, 1642
- Chapter III — Remarks on the Variation of the Needle
- Chapter IV — He Discovers a New Country to Which He Gives the Name of Van Diemen’s Land
- Chapter V — Sails from Thence for New Zealand
- Chapter VI — Visits the Island of the Three Kings, and Goes in Search of Other Islands Discovered by Schovten
- Chapter VII — Remarkable Occurrences in the Voyage
- Chapter VIII — Observations On, and Explanation Of, the Variation of the Compass
- Chapter IX — Discovers a New Island, Which He Calls Pylstaart Island
- Chapter X — And Two Islands, to Which He Gives the Name of Amsterdam and Rotterdam
- Chapter XI — And an Archipelago of Twenty Small Islands
- Chapter XII — Occurrences in the Voyage
- Chapter XIII — He Arrives at the Archipelago of Anthong Java
- Chapter XIV — His Arrival on the Coast of New Guinea
- Chapter XV — Continues His Voyage Along That Coast
- Chapter XVI — Arrives in the Neighbourhood of Burning Island, and Surveys the Whole Coast of New Guinea
- Chapter XVII — Comes to the Islands of Jama and Moa
- Chapter XVIII — Prosecutes His Voyage to Ceram
- Chapter XIX — Arrives Safely at Batavia, June 15, 1643
- Chapter XX — Consequences of Captain Tasman’s Discoveries
- Chapter XXI — Remarks Upon the Voyage
- An Account of New Holland and the Adjacent Islands. 1699–1700
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The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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