On the twenty-eighth of December of the year 1618, William Ysbrantsz Bontekoe, with a ship of 550 ton and 206 men, left the roads of Texel for India. The name of the vessel was the Nieuw Hoorn, and it was loaded with gunpowder. Kindly remember that gunpowder. There were the usual storms, the usual broken masts; the customary number of sick sailors either died or recovered; the customary route along the coast of Africa was followed. The weather, once the cape was left behind, was fine, and a short stay on the island of Reunion allowed the sick to regain their health and the dead to be buried. The natives were well disposed and traded with Bontekoe. They entertained him and danced for the amusement of his men, and everything was as happy as could be.
At last the voyage across the Indian Ocean was started under the best of auspices, and the Nieuw Hoorn had almost reached the Strait of Sunda when the great calamity occurred. On the nineteenth of November, almost a year, therefore, after the ship had left Holland, one of the pantrymen went into the hold to get himself some brandy. It was very dark in the hold, and therefore he had taken a candle with him. This candle, in a short iron holder, with a sharp point to it, he stuck into a barrel which was on top of the one out of which he filled his bottle. When he got through with his job he jerked the iron candlestick out of the wood of the barrel. In doing so a small piece of burning tallow fell into the brandy. That caused an explosion, and the next moment the brandy inside the barrel had caught fire. Fortunately there were two pails of water standing near by, and the fire was easily extinguished. A lot more water was pumped upon the dangerous barrels, and the fire, as far as anybody could see or smell, had been put out. But half an hour later the dreadful cry of "Fire!" was heard once more all through the ship. This time the coals which were in the hold near the brandy, and which were used for the kitchen stove and the blacksmith shop, had caught fire. They filled the hold with poisonous gas and a thick and yellowish smoke. For the second time the pumps were set to work to fill the hold with water. But the air inside the hold was so bad that the firemen had a difficult task. As the hours went by the fire grew worse. Bontekoe proposed to throw his cargo of gunpowder overboard. But as I have related in my first chapters, there always was a civilian commander on board such Indian vessels. It was his duty to look after the cargo and to represent the commercial interest of the company. Bontekoe's civilian master did not wish to lose his valuable gunpowder. He told the captain to leave it where it was and try to put out the fire. Bontekoe obeyed, but soon his men could no longer stand the smoke in the hold. Large holes were then hacked through the deck and through these water was poured upon the cargo. Now Bontekoe was a pious man, but he was neither very strong of character nor very resourceful of mind. He spent his time in running about the ship giving many orders, the majority of which were to no great purpose. Meanwhile he did not notice that part of the crew, from fear of being blown up, had lowered the boats and were getting ready to leave the ship. The civilian director, who had just told the captain to save the gunpowder, had been the first to join in the flight. He was soon safely riding the waves in a small boat far away from the doomed ship.
For those who had been deserted on board there was only one way to salvation; they must try to put out the fire or be killed. Under personal command of their captain they set to work and pumped and pumped and pumped. But the fire had reached several barrels of oil, and there was a dense smoke. It was impossible to throw 310 barrels of powder overboard in the suffocating atmosphere of the hold, yet the men tried to do it. They worked with desperate speed, but before the sixth part of the dangerous cargo was in the waters of the ocean the fire reached the forward part, where the powder was stored. A few moments later one hundred and ninety men were blown skyward, together with pieces of the masts and pieces of the ship and heavy iron bars and pieces of sail and everything that belongs to a well-equipped vessel. "And I, Captain Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe, commander of the ship, also flew through the sky, and I thought that my end had come. So I stretched my hands and arms toward heaven and said: 'O dear Lord, there I go! Please have pity upon this miserable sinner!' because I thought that now the next moment I must be dead; but all the time I was flying through the air I kept my mind clear, and I found that there was happiness in my heart; yes, I even found that I was quite gay, and so came down again, and landed in the water between pieces of the ship which had been blown into little scraps."
This is the captain's own minute account of the psychology of being blown up. He continues:
"And when I was now once in the water of the sea, I felt my courage return in such a way that it was as if I had become a new man. And when I looked around I found a piece of the mainmast floating at my side, and so I climbed on top of it, and looking over the scene around me, I said, 'O Lord, so hath this fine ship been destroyed even as Sodom and Gomorrah.'"
For a short while the skipper floated and contemplated upon his mast, and then he noticed that he was no longer alone. A young German who had been on board as a common sailor came swimming to the wreckage. He climbed on the only piece of the ship's stern that was afloat, and pulling the captain's mast nearer to him with a long stick which he had fished out of the water, he helped our good Bontekoe to pull himself on board his wreckage. There they were together on the lonely ocean on a few boards and with no prospect of rescue. Both the boats were far away, and showed themselves only as small black dots upon the distant horizon. Bontekoe told his comrade to pray with him. For a long time they whispered their supplications to heaven. Then they looked once more to see what the boats were doing. And behold! their prayer had been answered. The boats came rowing back as fast as they could. When they saw the two men they tried to reach the wreckage; but they did not dare to come too near for their heavily loaded boats ran the risk of being thrown against the remains of the hulk. In that case they would have been swamped. Bontekoe had felt very happy as long as he had been up in the air. Now, however, he began to notice that he had hurt his back badly and that he had been wounded in the head. He did not dare to swim to the boats, but the bugler of the ship, who was in the first boat, swam back to the wreckage, fastened a rope around Bontekoe's waist, and in this fashion the commander was pulled safely on board, where he was made as comfortable as could be. During the night the two boats remained near the place of the misfortune because they hoped that they might find a few things to eat in the morning. They had only a little bread and no water at all.
Meanwhile the exhausted skipper slept, and when in the morning his men told him that they had nothing to eat he was very angry, for the day before the sea around his mast had been full of all sorts of boxes and barrels and there had been enough to eat for everybody. During the night, however, the boats had been blown away from the wreckage by the wind. There was no chance to get anything at all. Eight pounds of bread made up the total amount of provisions for seventy strong men. Of these there were forty-six in one and twenty-six in the second boat. Part of that bread was used by the ship's doctor to make a plaster for Bontekoe's wounds. With the help of a pillow which had been found in the locker of the biggest boat and which he wore around his head, Bontekoe was then partly restored to life, and he took command of his squadron and decided what ought to be done. There were masts in the boat, but the sails had been forgotten. Therefore he ordered the men to give up their shirts. Out of these, two large sails were made. They were primitive sails, but they caught the breeze, and with the help of the western wind Bontekoe hoped to reach the coast of Sumatra, which, according to the best guess of all those on board, must be seventy miles to the east. All those who had the map of that part of India fairly well in their heads were consulted, and upon a piece of wood a chart of the coast of Sumatra, the Sunda Islands, and the west coast of Java was neatly engraved with the help of a nail and a pocket-knife. A few simple instruments were cut out of old planks, and the curious expedition was ready to navigate further eastward.
Fortunately it rained very hard during the first night. The sails made out of shirts were used to catch the rain, and the water was carefully saved in two small empty barrels which had been found in one of the two boats. A drinking-cup was cut out of a wooden stopper, and each of the sailors in turn got a few drops of water. For many hours they sailed, and they became dreadfully hungry. Again a merciful Heaven came to their assistance. A number of sea-gulls came flying around the boats, and many of them ventured so near that they seemed to say "Please catch us." Of course they were caught and killed, and although there was no way of cooking them, they were eaten by the hungry men as fast as they came. But a sea-gull is not a very fat bird, and again there was hunger, and not yet any sight of land. The big boat was a good sailor, but the small one could not keep up with her. Therefore the men in the small boat asked that they might be taken on board the big one, so that they might either perish together or all be saved. The sailors in the large boat did not like the idea. They feared that their boat could not hold all of the seventy-six men. After a while, however, they gave in. The men from the small boat were taken on board. Out of the extra oars a sort of deck was rigged up on top of the boat, and under this a number of the men were allowed to sleep while the others sat on top and looked for land or prayed for food and water.
No further sea-gulls came to feed this forlorn expedition, but just when they were so hungry that they could not stand it any longer, large shoals of flying-fish suddenly jumped out of the water into the boats. Again the men were saved. The two little barrels of water had been emptied by this time. For the second time the men expected that they would all perish. They sailed eastward, but they saw no land, and finally they got so hungry and thirsty that they talked about killing the cabin boy and eating him. Bontekoe asked them please not to do it, and he prayed the good Lord not to allow this horrible thing to happen. The men, however, said that they were very hungry and must have something to eat. Then he asked that they should wait just three days more. If no land was seen after three days, they might eat the cabin boy.
On the thirteenth day after the explosion there was a severe thunder-storm, and the barrels were filled with fresh water. Most of the men then crept under the little cover to be out of the rain, and only one of the mates was left on deck. It was very hazy, but when the fog parted for a moment he saw land very near the boat. The next morning the survivors reached an uninhabited island, where there was no fresh water, but an abundance of cocoanut-trees. The men attacked these cocoanuts with such greedy hunger and they drank the sap with such haste that on the succeeding day they were all very ill, with great pains and a feeling that they might explode at any moment just as their ship had done.
From the presence of this island Bontekoe argued that the coast of Sumatra must be about fifteen miles distant. He filled the boat with many cocoanuts, a wonderful fruit because it is food and drink at the same time, and sailed farther eastward. After seventy hours he actually reached Sumatra, but the surf did not allow him to land at once. It took an entire day before his men managed to row through that terrible surf, and then only at the cost of a swamped boat. At last, however, they did reach the shore, bailed out their boat, and made a fire to dry their clothes and to rest from the fatigue of this terrible experience. Some of the sailors meanwhile explored the country near by, and to their great astonishment they found the ashes of an old fire and near it some tobacco. This was very welcome, for the men had not smoked for many weeks. They also found some beans. These they ate so greedily that they were all ill, and in the middle of the night, when they lay around groaning and moaning, they were suddenly attacked by the natives of the island. They had no arms, but they defended themselves as well as possible with sticks and pieces of burning wood which they picked up out of the fire. The natives fled, and the next morning sent three messengers to have a talk with the shipwrecked Hollanders. They wanted to know why he and his men had come to their island. They were told the story of the burning ship and the explosion which had killed many of the other sailors. Bontekoe said that he was a peaceful traveler, and would pay for everything he bought. The natives believed this story, and came back with chickens and rice and all sorts of eatables, for which Bontekoe paid with money. The natives then told him that this land was Sumatra and that Java was a little farther to the east. They even knew the name of the governor-general, and Bontekoe now felt certain that he was on the right road to a Dutch harbor.
Before he left he made a little trip up the river to buy more food, for he counted upon a long voyage in the small boat. This visit almost cost him his life. One day he had bought a carabao. He had paid for the animal, and told the four sailors who were with him to bring it to the camp; but the carabao was so wild that they could not manage it. The four sailors decided to spend the night in the village and try their luck once more the next morning. Bontekoe thought that this was too dangerous, and when his men refused to return to join the others, he hired two natives to paddle him back in their own canoe. The natives told him the price for which they would row him back to the camp, and he gave them the required sum; but when they were out in the middle of the river they threatened to kill Bontekoe unless he gave them more money. Bontekoe said a short prayer and felt very uncomfortable. Then he heard a voice inside himself tell him to sing a funny song. This he did. He sang so loud that the noise resounded through the quiet forests on both sides of the river. The two natives thought that this was the funniest thing that they had ever heard, and they laughed so uproariously that they forgot all about their plan to kill the white man, and Bontekoe came safely back to his own people.
The next morning a number of natives appeared with a carabao, but Bontekoe saw at once that it was not the same one that he had bought the day before. He asked about it, and wanted to know where his men were. "Oh," the natives said, "they are lazy and they will come a little later." This looked suspicious, but whatever happened, Bontekoe must have his carabao to be eaten on the trip across the Strait of Sunda. Therefore he tried to kill the animal, but when they saw this the natives suddenly began to call him names and they shrieked until several hundred others came running from the bushes and attacked the Hollanders. These fled back to their boat, but before they could reach it eleven men had been killed. Of those who scrambled on board one had been hit in the stomach with a poisoned arrow. Bontekoe performed an operation, trying to cut away the flesh around the wound, but he did not succeed in saving the life of the poor fellow. There were now only fifty-six men left.
With only eight chickens for so many men Bontekoe did not dare to cross the strait. The next morning, armed, he went on shore, and, having gathered a lot of clams and filled the small barrels with fresh water, sailed away for the coast of Java. They sailed all day long, but at night there came so violent a wind that the sails had to be taken down, and the boat drifted whither it pleased the good Lord to send it. It pleased Him to bring it the next morning near three small islands densely covered with palm-trees. Out of the bamboo which grew near the shore several water-barrels were improvised. There was still some food, but not much. Therefore the discovery of these islands did not bring much relief to the poor shipwrecked people. Bontekoe wandered about in a despondent mood, and when he saw a small hill he climbed to the top of it to be alone and to pray to the good Lord for his divine counsel. He prayed for a long time, and when at last he opened his eyes he saw that the clouds on the horizon had parted and that there was more land in the distance, and out of this he saw two bluish-looking mountains lifting their peaks. Suddenly he remembered that his friend, Captain Schouten, who had been in those parts of India, had often told him of two strange blue mountains which he had often seen in Java. He had sailed across the sea which separated Sumatra from Java, and the island on which he and his men now were was a little island off the coast of Java. He knew his way now, and he ordered his men to row as fast as they could. A boy was told to climb the mast and keep watch. And, behold! the next day the sailors suddenly saw a large Dutch fleet of twenty-three ships, under Frederik Houtman, who had left Texel with Bontekoe and was on his way to Batavia. He took all the men on board his ships. He fed them, gave them clothes, and carried them to Batavia, the newly founded capital of the Dutch East Indies, where the governor general, one Jan Pieterszoon Coen, received them very kindly, and appointed Bontekoe to be captain of a new ship, of thirty-two guns, which plied between the different colonies and carried provisions and supplies of war from Java to the other colonies. It also brought to Java the granite which was necessary to build the strong fort where the government of the colony was to reside. Later on Bontekoe was made captain of another ship called the Groningen, and he visited China, where the Dutch company tried to capture the Portuguese colony in Macao and to build a fort on one of the Pescadores Islands to protect their Chinese trade.
After two years of this work Bontekoe wanted to return home, and he asked to be given the command of a ship that was about to leave for Holland. He was given command of the Hollandia, which with two other ships left Batavia on the sixth of February of the year of our Lord 1625. But Bontekoe's bad luck had not yet come to an end. This patient man, who never lost his temper and accepted everything that happened to him with devout resignation, once more became the victim of all sorts of unfortunate occurrences. On the nineteenth of March his ship was attacked by a terrible storm, and soon the waves threatened to swamp the vessel. Bontekoe ordered the men to work the pumps as hard as they could. Then the pepper stowed away in the hold broke loose, got into the pumps and clogged them. Finally baskets were placed about the lower part of the pumps to keep the pernicious pepper out of them, and the Hollandia was saved.
Of the other two ships, one, the Gouda, had disappeared when the morning came, and the other, the Middelburg, had suffered much. Her masts were broken, and they had no spare the Atlantic. Finally the Middelburg left part of his spare yards for masts, and then he sailed with all possible haste for Madagascar to repair his own damage. He reached the island inside a week, and cut himself a mast out of a tree. He repaired his ship and spent a month on the island, where he was well received by the natives, who flocked from all over to see how the Hollanders made a new ship out of the wreck which they had saved from the storm. Here Bontekoe waited for the other ships. But the Gouda had sunk, and the other, the Middelburg, reached Madagascar much later, and spent several months in the bay of Antongil. Most of her people were ill and among those who died on the island was the commander of the ship, Willem Schouten, who with Le Maire had discovered the new route between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Finally the Middleburg left Madagascar and sailed to St. Helena. There she got into a fight with two Portuguese vessels, and that is the last word we have ever received of her. As for Bontekoe, he, too, reached St. Helena, where he wanted to take in fresh water. But a Spanish ship had landed troops, and he was not allowed to come on shore. So he went farther on, and at last reached Kinsale in Ireland. This time the joys of life on land almost finished the brave captain who so often had escaped the anger of the waves. His sailors went on shore, and after the long voyage they appreciated the hospitality of the Irish inns so well that they refused to come back on board. They stayed on shore until the mayor of the city, at the request of Bontekoe, forbade the owners of ale-houses to give the Hollanders more than seven shillings' credit apiece. As soon as this was known the men, many of whom had spent much more than that, hastened back to their ship. Crowds of furious innkeepers and their wives, crying aloud for their money, followed them.
Good Captain Bontekoe paid everybody what he or she had a right to ask, and finally, on the twenty-fifth of November of the year 1625, he reached home. Bontekoe went to live quietly in his native city of Hoorn. He had written a short account of his voyage, but he had never printed it because he did not think that he could write well enough. But one of his fellow-townsmen wanted to write a large volume upon the noble deeds of the people of Hoorn, and he asked Bontekoe to write down the main events of his famous voyage, and he promised to edit the little book for the benefit of the reading public.
And behold! this same public, saturated with stories of wild men and wild animals and terrible storms and uninhabited islands and treacherous Portuguese and hairbreadth escapes, took such a fancy to the simple recital of Bontekoe's pious trip toward heaven and the patience with which he had accepted the vicissitudes of life that they read his little book long after the more ponderous volumes had been left to the kind ministrations of the meritorious book-worm.
This is the story of a voyage to a country which did not exist. The men who risked their capital in this expedition hoped to reach a territory which we now call Australia. It was not exactly the Australia which we know from our modern geography. It was a mysterious continent of which there had been heard many rumors for more than half a century. What the contemporary traveler really hoped to find we do not know, but we have the details of an expedition to this new land called "Terra Australis incognita" or "the unknown southern land," an expedition which left the harbor of Hoorn on the fifteenth of June of the year 1615.
Hoorn is a little city on the Zuyder Zee, just such a little city as Enkhuizen, from which Linschoten had set out upon his memorable voyage. This voyage had a short preface which has little to do with navigation, but much with provincial politics and commercial rivalry. The original idea of allowing everybody to found his own little Indian trading company after his own wishes had been a bad one from an economic point of view. There was so much competition between the three dozen little companies that all were threatened with bankruptcy. Therefore a financial genius, the eminent leader of the province of Holland, John of Barneveldt, took matters into his own capable hands and combined all the little companies into one large East India Trading Company, a commercial body which existed until the year 1795 and was a great success from start to finish.
Among the original investors there had been a certain Jacques le Maire, a native of the town of Antwerp who had fled when the Spaniards took that city for the second time, and who now lived in Amsterdam with his wife and his twenty-two children. He was respected for his ability, and was chosen into the body of directors who managed the affairs of the East India Company. But Le Maire was not the sort of man to stay in the harness with others for a very long time. He complained that the company cared only for dividends and immediate profits. He wanted to see the ships of his adopted country make war upon the Spaniards, besides trying to steal their colonies.
After a few years Le Maire quarreled openly with several of the other directors, and he planned to form an Indian company of his own. In Amsterdam, however, he was so strongly opposed by his enemies, who were still in the old company, that he was forced to leave the city. He went to live in a small village near by and continued to work upon his schemes. With Hendrik Hudson he discussed a plan of reaching the Indies by way of the Northwestern Route—a route which was as yet untried. To King Henry IV of France he made the offer of establishing a new French company as a rival of the mighty Dutch institution. All these many ideas came to nothing. Henry IV was murdered, and Hudson went into the service of another employer.
Le Maire was obliged to invent something new. He was in a very difficult position. The Estates General of the Dutch Republic had given to their one East India Company a practical monopoly of the entire Indian trade. They decided that no Dutch ships should be allowed to travel to the Indies except through the Strait of Magellan or by way of the Cape of Good Hope. That meant that the entrance to the Indian spice islands was closed at both sides. It was of course easy enough to sail through the strait or past the cape. There was nobody to prevent one from doing so. But when one tried to trade in India on his own account, the Dutch company sent their men-of-war after the intruder. These wanted to know who he was and how he came within the domain of the company. Since there were only two roads, he must have trespassed in one way or the other upon the privileges of the company. Therefore the company, which was the sovereign ruler of all the Indian islands, had the right to confiscate his ships.
If Le Maire could only find a new road to India, he would not interfere with the strict rules of the Estates General. His ships could then trade in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean, and he would be the most dangerous rival of the old company, which he had learned to hate since the days when he had first invested sixty thousand guilders and had been one of the directors. For a long time Le Maire studied books and maps and atlases, and finally came to the conclusion that there must be another way of getting from the Atlantic into the Pacific besides the long and tortuous Strait of Magellan. And if there were a strait, there must be land on the other side of it. If only this could be discovered, Le Maire would be rich again, and could laugh at the pretentions of the East India Company.
Le Maire did not go to Amsterdam to get the necessary funds for his expedition. He interested the good people of the little town of Hoorn, and with a fine prospectus about his "Unknown Southern Land" he soon got all the money he needed. The Estates General were willing to give him all the privileges he asked for provided he did not touch the monopolies of their beloved East India Company. Even Prince Maurice interested himself sufficiently in this voyage to a new continent to give Le Maire a letter of introduction which put the expedition upon more official footing.
Two small ships were bought, and eighty-seven men were engaged for two years. On the largest ship of the two, called the Eendracht, there were sixty-five men, and on the small yacht the Hoorn there were twenty-two. William Cornelisz Schouten was commander-in-chief. He had made three trips to India by way of the cape. Two sons of Le Maire, one called Jacques, the other Daniel, went with the expedition to keep a watchful eye upon everything and to see to it that their father's wishes were carefully executed. The ships were forbidden to enter the Strait of Magellan. In case of need they might return by way of the Cape, but they must be careful not to trade with any of the Indian princes who now recognized the rule of the East India Company. The main purpose of the expedition was to find the unknown continent in the Pacific. For this main purpose they must sacrifice everything else. And so they left Hoorn, and they sailed toward the south.
It was more than twenty years since the first expedition had sailed for India. The route across the Atlantic was well known by this time. There is nothing particular to narrate about the dull trip of three months enlivened only by the attack of a large monster, a sort of unicorn, which stuck his horn into the ship with such violence that he perished and left behind the horn, which was found when the ships were overhauled near the island of Porto Deseado, where Van Noort, too, had made ready for his trip through the strait many years before.
The cleaning of the smaller of the two vessels, however, was done so carelessly that it caught fire. Since it had been placed on a high bank at high tide and the water had ebbed, there was no water with which to extinguish the conflagration. Except for the guns, the entire ship and its contents were lost.
The sailors were taken on board the Eendracht, and on the thirteenth of January of the year 1616 the ship passed by the entrance of the Strait of Magellan and began to search for a new thoroughfare into the Pacific farther toward the South. On the twenty-third of January the most eastern promontory of Tierra del Fuego was seen. The next day the high mountains of another little island further toward the east appeared in the distance. Evidently Le Maire had been right in his calculations. There was another strait, and the Eendracht had discovered it. Such big events are usually very simple affairs. The southernmost point of Tierra del Fuego was easily reached and was called Cape Hoorn, after the town which had equipped the expedition. The Eendracht now sailed further westward, and in less than two weeks found herself in the Pacific Ocean. On the twelfth of February the great discovery was celebrated with a party for the benefit of the sailors. They had been the first to pass through the Strait of Jacques le Maire and the dangerous route discovered by Magellan ninety-five years before could now be given up for the safer and shorter passage through Strait le Maire and the open water south of Tierra del Fuego.
The ship had an easy voyage until it dropped its anchors before Juan Fernandez, the famous island of Robinson Crusoe. It was found to be the little paradise which De Foe afterward painted in his entertaining novel. Fresh water was taken on board, and the voyage was continued. After a month of rapid progress, with a good eastern wind, land was seen. It was a small coral island, probably one of the Paomuta group. Some men swam ashore, for it was impossible to use the boat on account of the heavy surf. They saw nothing but a flat, naked island and three strange dogs that did not bark. They found some fresh fruit, which they brought back to the ship for the sick people. Of course there were sick people. That was a part of every voyage. But the illness was not serious. Four days later they discovered a second island somewhat larger. This was inhabited. A canoe with painted savages came out to the Dutch ship. Since the savages spoke neither Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, nor Malay, and the Dutch sailors did not know the Papua dialect, it was impossible to have conversation with these ignorant people who refused to come on board. Captain Schouten was not in need of anything, and he went on his way to try his luck at the next island. The natives had now discovered that there was no harm in this strange, large floating object. They came climbing over all the sides of the ship. They stole brass nails and small metal objects, hid them in their wooly and long hair, and then jumped overboard. Everywhere the same thing happened. Schouten sailed from one island to the next, but of any new continent, however, he found no sign. When you look at the map you will notice that this part of the Pacific is thickly dotted with small islands. Their inhabitants are great mariners, and in their little boats travel long distances. Schouten with his big ship caused great consternation among these simple fishermen, who hastily fled whenever they saw this strange big devil bearing down upon them.
The trip was very pleasant, but it grew tiresome to discover nothing but little islands. At last, however, on the tenth of May, a big one with high mountains and forests was reached. It was called Cocos Island because there were many cocoanut-trees near the shore. The inhabitants of the island, being unfamiliar with white people, were very hospitable and were willing to trade fresh cocoanuts and other eatable things for a few gifts of trinkets and perhaps a small pocket-knife. But jealousy was not unknown even in this distant part of the South Seas. Soon there was a quarrel between those canoes nearest to the ship which had obtained presents and others too far away to receive anything. Also there was a good deal of annoyance caused by the fact that the natives insisted upon stealing everything they could find on the ship. Finally Schouten was obliged to appoint a temporary police of Hollanders armed with heavy canes to keep the natives in their proper place. Otherwise they might have stolen the ship itself, just as they had once tried to make away with all the boats. Upon that occasion they had made their first acquaintance of fire-arms. When they saw what a little bullet could do they respected the mysterious lead pipes which made a sudden loud noise and killed a man at a hundred yards. Near Cocos Island there appeared to be more mountainous land, and Schouten decided to visit it. The king came out in state in his canoe to greet the Dutch captain. He was entertained royally with a concert. To show how much he appreciated the lovely music which he had just heard the king yelled and shrieked as loudly as he could. It was very funny, and everybody was happy. But this pleasant relation did not last long, for when the Hollanders were about to reciprocate the visit their ship was attacked, and several volleys from the large cannon were necessary to drive the natives away. These islands were called the Islands of the Traitors, because the king had tried to kill the people whom he had invited as his guests, and they are known to-day as the Ladrones.
The Eendracht was now sixteen hundred miles to the west of Peru, and as yet the unknown Southern continent had not been discovered. The wind continued to blow from the east. In a council of the officers of the ship it was decided to keep a more northern course until it could be ascertained with precision where they were in this vast expanse of pacific water and small coral islands. It was an unfortunate decision. The ship was then very near the coast of Australia. Sailing from one group of islands to the next it had followed a course parallel to the northern coast of the continent for which the men were searching with great industry. After a while they were obliged to land on another island for fresh water. They were again entertained by the king of the island. He gave a dinner and a dance in their honor, and they had a chance to admire the graceful motions of the young girls of the villages. They must have been among the Fiji Islands. Farther westward, however, they discovered that the attitude of the natives toward them began to change. Evidently they were reaching a region where the white man was not unknown and was accordingly distrusted. Chinese and Japanese objects, here and there a knife or a gun of European origin, were found among the natives who came paddling out to the Dutch ship. Their map told them that they were approaching the domains of the East India Company. It had not been their intention to do this, but the reputed Southern continent seemed to be a myth. It was time for them to try and reach home and report their adventures to the owners of the ship.
Sailing along the coast of New Guinea, they at last reached the port of Ternate on the seventeenth of September. Here they found a large Dutch fleet which had just reached the Indies by way of the Strait of Magellan. This fleet was under command of Admiral van Spilbergen, who was much surprised to hear that the Eendracht had reached the Pacific through a new strait. He showed that he did not believe the story which Schouten told of his new discoveries. If there were such a strait, then why had it taken the Eendracht such a long time to reach Ternate? etc. The admiral suspected that this ship was a mere interloper sent by Le Maire to trade in a region where, according to the instructions of the East Indian Company, no other ships than those of the company were allowed to engage in commerce.
This suspicion was very unpleasant for the brave Schouten, but there were other things to worry him. Before the expedition started old Le Maire, a shrewd trader, had thought of the possibility that his ships might not be able to find this unknown continent. In that case he did not want them to come home without some profit to himself, and he had invented a scheme by which he might perhaps beat the company at her own game. The governor-general of the Dutch colonies at that time was a certain Gerard Reynst, who was known to be an avaricious and dishonest official. Le Maire counted upon this, and to his eldest son he had given secret instructions which told him what to do in such circumstances. The idea was very simple. Young Le Maire must bribe Reynst with an offer of money or whatever would be most acceptable to the governor. In return for this Reynst would not be too particular if the Eendracht went to some out-of-the-way island and bought a few hundred thousand pounds worth of spices.
It was a very happy idea, and it undoubtedly would have worked. Unfortunately Reynst had just died. His successor was no one less than Jan Pietersz Coen, the man of iron who was to hammer the few isolated settlements into one strong colonial empire. Coen could not be bribed. To him the law was the law. The Eendracht did not belong to the East India Company; therefore, it had no right to be in India according to Coen's positive instructions. The ship was confiscated. The men were allowed to return to Holland. And the owners were told that they could start a lawsuit in the Dutch courts to decide whether the governor-general had acted within his rights or not.
Young Le Maire sailed for Holland very much dejected. He had lost his father's ship, and nobody would believe him when he told of his great discovery of the new and short connection between the Pacific and the Atlantic. He died on the way home, died of disappointment. His hopes had been so great. He had done his task faithfully, and he and Schouten had found a large number of new islands and had added many thousands of miles of geographical information to that part of the map which was still covered with the ominous letters of terra incognita. Yet through an ordinance which many people did not recognize as just he was deprived of the glory which ought to have come to him. His younger brother reached Holland on the second of July of the year 1617, and a week later he appeared in the meeting of the Estates General. This time the story which he told was believed by his hearers. The idea of an old man being the chief mover in equipping such a wonderful enterprise with the help of his sons and only a small capital against all sorts of odds assured Le Maire the sympathy of the man in the street. For a while Governor-General Coen was highly unpopular.
Old Le Maire started a suit for the recovery of his ship and its contents. After two years of pleading he won his case. The East India Company was ordered to pay back the value of the ship and the goods confiscated. All his official papers were returned to Le Maire. His name and that of the little town of Hoorn, given to the most southern point of the American continent and to the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, tell of this great voyage of the year 1618.
It often happened that ships of the Dutch East India Company on their way to the Indies were blown out of their course or were carried by the currents in a southern direction. Then they were driven into a part of the map which was as yet unknown, and they had to find their way about very much as a stranger might do who has left the well-known track of the desert. Sometimes these ships were lost. More often they reached a low, flat coast which seemed to extend both east and west as far as the eye could reach, which offered very little food and very little water, and appeared to be the shore-line of a vast continent which was remarkably poor in both plants and animals. Indeed, so unattractive was this big island, as it was then supposed to be, to the captains of the company that not a single one of them had ever taken the trouble to explore it. They had followed the coast-line until once more they reached the well-known regions of their map, and then they had hastened northward to the comfortable waters of their own Indian Ocean. But of course people talked about this mysterious big island, and they wondered. They wondered whether, perhaps, the stories of the Old Testament, the stories of the golden land of Ophir, which had never yet been found, might not yet be proved true in that large part of the map which showed a blank space and was covered with the letters of terra incognita.
If there were any such land still to be discovered by any European people, the Dutch East India Company decided that they ought to benefit by it. Therefore their directors studied the question with great care and deliberation.
A number of expeditions were sent out one after the other. In the year 1636 two small vessels were ordered to make a careful examination of the island of New Guinea, which was supposed to be the peninsula part of the unknown Southern continent. But New Guinea itself is so large that the two vessels, after spending a very long time along the coast, were obliged to return without any definite information.
Anthony van Diemen, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, however, was a man of stubborn purpose, and he refused to discontinue his search until he should have positive knowledge upon this puzzling subject. Six years after this first attempt he appointed a certain Franz Jacobsz Visscher to study the question theoretically from every possible angle and to write him a detailed report. Visscher had crossed the Pacific Ocean a few years after the discovery of Strait Le Maire, and he had visited Japan and China, and was familiar with all the better known parts of the Asiatic seas. He set to work, and he gave the following advice. The ships of the company must take the island of Mauritius as their starting-point. They must follow a southeastern course until they should reach the 54 degree of latitude. If, in the meantime, they had not found any land, they must turn toward the east until they should reach New Guinea, and from there, using this peninsula or island or whatever it was as a starting-point, they should establish its correct relation to the continent of which it was supposed to be a solid part. If it should prove to be an island, then the ships must chart the strait which separated it from the continent, and they must find out whether these did not offer a short route from India to Strait Le Maire and the Atlantic Ocean.
Van Diemen studied those plans carefully. He approved of them, and ordered two ships to be made ready for the voyage. They were small ships. There was the Heemskerk, with sixty men, and the Zeehaen, with only forty. Visscher was engaged to act as pilot and general adviser of the expedition. The command was given to one Abel Tasman. Like most of the great men of the republic, he had made his own career. Born in an insignificant village in the northern part of the republic somewhere in the province of Groningen,—the name of the village was Lutjegat,—he had started life as a sailor, had worked his way up through ability and force of character, and in the early thirties of the seventeenth century he had gone to India. Thereafter he had spent most of his life as captain or mate of different ships of the company. He had been commander of an expedition sent out to discover a new gold-land, which, according to rumor, must be situated somewhere off the coast of Japan, and although he did not find it,—since it did not exist,—he had added many new islands to the map of the company. Since he was a man of very independent character, he was specially fitted to be in command of an expedition which might meet with many unforeseen difficulties.
His instructions gave him absolute freedom of action. The chief purpose of this expedition was a scientific one. Professional draughtsmen were appointed to accompany the Heemskerk and make careful maps of everything that should be discovered. Special attention must be paid to the currents of the ocean and to the prevailing direction of the wind. Furthermore, a careful study of the natives must be made. Their mode of life, their customs, and their habits must be investigated, and they must be treated with kindness. If the natives should come on board and should steal things, the Hollanders must not mind such trifles. The chief aim of the expedition was to establish relations with whatever races were to be discovered. Of course there was little hope of finding anything except long-haired Papuans, but if by any chance Tasman should discover the unknown southland and find that this continent contained the rumored riches, he must not show himself desirous of getting gold and silver. On the contrary, he must show the inhabitants lead and brass, and tell them that these two metals were the most valuable commodities in the country which had sent him upon his voyage. Finally, whatever land was found must be annexed officially for the benefit of the Estates General of the Dutch Republic, and of this fact some lasting memorial must be left upon the coast in the form of a written document, well hidden below a stone or a board planted in such a way that the natives could not destroy it.
On the nineteenth of August, Tasman and his two ships went to Mauritius, where the tanks were filled with fresh water and all the men got a holiday. They were given plenty of food to strengthen them for the voyage which they were about to undertake through the unknown seas. After a month of leisure the two ships left on the sixth of October of the year 1642 and started out to discover whatever they might find. The farther southward they got the colder the climate began to be. Snow and hail and fog were the order of the day. Seals appeared, and everything indicated that they were reaching the Arctic Ocean of the Southern Hemisphere. Day and night they kept a man in the crow's-nest to look for land. Tasman offered a reward of money and rum for the sailor who should first see a light upon the horizon, but they found nothing except salt water and a cloudy sky.
Tasman consulted Visscher, and asked him whether it would not be better to follow the 44 degree of latitude than to go farther into this stormy region. Since they had been sailing in a southern direction for almost a month without finding anything at all, Visscher agreed to this change in his original plans. Once more there followed a couple of weeks of dreary travel without the sight of anything hopeful. At last on the twenty-ninth of November of the year 1642, at four o'clock of the afternoon, land was seen. Tasman thought that it was part of his continent and called it Van Diemen's Land, after the governor-general who had sent him out. We know that it was an island to the south of the Australian continent, and we now call it Tasmania.