he '_Onbekende Zuidland_,' by which name, or by that of Eendragts
Land, Australia was designated in whole or in part in the official
dispatches of the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth century.

On the 29th of December, 1696, the vessels under the command of De
Vlaming lay at anchor between Rottnest Island and the mainland of
Australia. The island was searched for wreckage with little result. One
piece of timber was found which, it was conjectured, might have been
deck timber, and a plank was found, three feet long and one span broad.
The nails in the wreckage were very rusty. The search for shipwrecked
sailors on the adjacent mainland was unsuccessful. On the 20th and on
the 31st of December, and on the 1st of January, 1697, De Vlaming notes
in his journal that odoriferous wood was found on the mainland. Portions
of it were subsequently submitted to the Council of the Dutch East
Indies at Batavia, and from these portions an essential oil was obtained
by distillation. It may well be supposed that this experiment was the
first in the manufacture of eucalyptus oil, which, however, in our day
is obtained not from the wood but from the leaves of the tree. On the
13th of January De Vlaming records that a dark resinous gum resembling
lac was seen exuding from trees.

In a narrative of the voyage published under the title _Journaal wegens
een Voyagie na het onbekende Zuid-land_, we read that on the 11th of
January nine or ten Black Swans were seen. In a letter from Willem van
Oudhoorn, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, to the Managers of
the East India Company at the Amsterdam Chamber, it is stated that three
black swans were brought alive to Batavia, but died soon after their
arrival.[7]

Several boat expeditions were made, and Swan River was entered and
ascended. During these expeditions the author of the _Journaal_ mentions
that the song of the 'Nachtegael' was heard. There are no nightingales
in Australia, but the bird to which the writer of the _Journaal_ alludes
may have been the Long-billed Reed Warbler, the Australian
representative of the Sedge Warbler and a denizen of the reed-beds of
the Swan River. Two species of geese are also mentioned by the same
writer under the names of European geese. It is somewhat difficult to
determine to which geese the author of the _Journaal_ alludes under the
names 'Kropgans' and 'Rotgans.'

When English-speaking Dutch are asked to translate 'kropgans,' they do
s