The Project Gutenberg eBook, Adventures in Southern Seas, by George Forbes

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Title: Adventures in Southern Seas
A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

Author: George Forbes

Release Date: September 16, 2005 [eBook #16704]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN SOUTHERN SEAS***

E-text prepared by James Tenison

ADVENTURES IN SOUTHERN SEAS

A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

by

GEORGE FORBES

First published August 1920 by George
G. Harrap & Co. Ltd. 39-41 Parker
Street, Kingsway, London, W.C.2
Reprinted July 1924
Printed in Great Britain by Neill & Co. Ltd., Edinburgh

INTRODUCTORY

In the year 1801 was found by the chief coxswain of the "Naturalist" (a
ship commanded by Captain Hamelin on a voyage of discovery performed by
order of the Emperor Napoleon I), at Shark's Bay, on the coast of West
Australia, a pewter plate about six inches in diameter, bearing a
roughly engraved Dutch inscription, of which the following is a
translation:

"1616

"On the 25th of October arrived here the ship 'Endraght',
of Amsterdam; first supercargo Gilles Miebas Van Luck;
Captain Dirk Hartog, of Amsterdam. She set sail again
on the 27th of the same month. Bantum was second
supercargo; Janstins first pilot.

"Peter Ecoores Van Bu, in the year 1616."

No connected account of the voyages of Dirk Hartog is extant, but the
report of the discovery of this pewter plate suggested the task of
compiling a narrative from the records kept by Dutch navigators, in
which Dirk Hartog is frequently referred to, and which is probably as
correct a history of Hartog's voyages as can be obtained. The
aborigines of New Holland, as Australia was then called, judging by the
description given of them by Van Bu, the author of the writing on the
pewter plate, appear to have been a more formidable race of savages
than those subsequently met with by Captain Cook on his landing at
Botany Bay, and the dimensions of the tribe among whom Van Bu was held
captive were certainly larger than those of the migratory tribes of
Australian blacks in more modern times. The "sea