e readers. An act of homage to our
ancestors, therefore, a modest one certainly, but one inspired by the
same feeling which in 1892 led Italy and the Iberian Peninsula to
celebrate the memory of the discoverer of America, and in 1898 prompted
the Portuguese to do homage to the navigator who first showed the world
the sea-route to India.

{Page ii}

How imperfect and fragmentary even in our days is the information
generally available concerning the part borne by the Netherlanders in the
discovery of the fifth part of the world, may especially be seen from the
works of foreigners. This, I think, must in the first place, though not,
indeed, exclusively, be accounted for by the rarity of a working
acquaintance with the Dutch tongue among foreign students. On this
account the publication of the documents referred to would very
imperfectly attain the object in view, unless accompanied by a careful
translation of these pieces of evidence into one of the leading languages
of Europe; and it stands to reason that in the case of the discovery of
Australia the English language would naturally suggest itself as the most
fitting medium of information[*]. So much to account for the bilingual
character of the jubilee publication now offered to the reader.

[* The English translation is the work of Mr. C. Stoffel, of Nijmegen.]

Closely connected with this consideration is another circumstance which
has influenced the mode of treatment followed in the preparation of this
work. The defective acquaintance with the Dutch language of those who
have made the history of the discovery of Australia the object of serious
study, or even, in the case of some of them, their total ignorance of it,
certainly appears to me one, nay even the most momentous of the causes of
the incomplete knowledge of the subject we are discussing; but it cannot
possibly be considered the only cause, if we remember that part of the
documentary evidence proving the share of the Netherlanders in the
discovery of Australia has already been given to the world through the
medium of a leading European tongue.

In 1859 R. H. MAJOR brought out his well-known book _Early Voyages to
Terra Australis, now called Australia_, containing translations of some
of the archival pieces and of other documents pertaining to the subject.
And though, from P. A. LEUPE'S work, entitled _De Reizen der Nederlanders
naar het Juidland of Nzeuw-Holland in de 17e en 18e eeuw_, published in
1868,