overy, and explored the northern and western shores of Australia
itself; but the results do not seem to have been important, and are not
now known. His chief service in the exploration of Australia was the
discovery of Tasmania, as it is now called, after his name. This he did
not know to be an island; he drew it on his maps as if it were a
peninsula belonging to the mainland of Australia.

#7. Dampier.#--The discoveries that had so far been made were very
imperfect, for the sailors generally contented themselves with looking
at the land from a safe distance. They made no surveys such as would
have enabled them to draw correct charts of the coasts; they seldom
landed, and even when they did, they never sought to become acquainted
with the natives, or to learn anything as to the nature of the interior
of the country. The first who took the trouble to obtain information of
this more accurate kind was the Englishman, William Dampier.

[Illustration: WILLIAM DAMPIER.]

When a young man Dampier had gone out to Jamaica to manage a large
estate; but not liking the slave-driving business, he crossed over to
Campeachy, and lived for a time in the woods, cutting the more valuable
kinds of timber. Here he became acquainted with the buccaneers who made
the lonely coves of Campeachy their headquarters. Being persuaded to
join them, he entered upon a life of lawless daring, constantly fighting
and plundering, and meeting with the wildest adventures. He was often
captured by the American natives, still more often by the Spaniards, but
always escaped to enter upon exploits of fresh danger. In 1688 he joined
a company of buccaneers, who proposed to make a voyage round the world
and plunder on their way. It took them more than a year to reach the
East Indies, where they spent a long time, sometimes attacking Spanish
ships or Dutch fortresses, sometimes leading an easy luxurious life
among the natives, often quarrelling among themselves, and even going so
far as to leave their captain with forty men on the island of Mindanao.
But at length the time came when it was necessary to seek some quiet
spot where they should be able to clean and repair the bottoms of their
ships. Accordingly, they landed on the north-west coast of Australia,
and lived for twelve days at the place now called "Buccaneers'
Archipelago". They were the first Europeans who held any communication
with the natives of Australia, and the first to publish a detailed
acco