Hope and the west coast of
Australia--especially one indicating the course of currents--will show
how natural it was that Portuguese and Dutch ships engaged in the spice
trade should occasionally have found themselves in proximity to the real
Terra Australis. It will also explain more clearly than a page of type
could do, why the western and north-western coasts were known so early,
whilst the eastern and southern shores remained undelineated until James
Cook and Matthew Flinders sailed along them.

A change of the route pursued by the Dutch on their voyages to the East
Indies had already conduced to an acquaintance with the Australian coast.
Originally, after rounding the Cape, their ships had sailed north-east to
Madagascar, and had thence struck across the Indian Ocean to Java, or to
Ceylon. As long as this course was followed, there was little prospect of
sighting the great continent which lay about three thousand miles east of
their habitual track. But this route, though from the map it appeared to
be the most direct, was the longest in duration that they could take. It
brought them into the region of light winds and tedious tropical calms;
so that very often a vessel would lie for weeks "as idle as a painted
ship upon a painted ocean," and would occupy over a year upon the outward
voyage. In 1611, however, one of their commanders discovered that if,
after leaving the Cape, a ship ran not north-east, but due east for about
three thousand miles, she would be assisted by the winds, not baffled by
calms. Henrick Brouwer, who made the experiment, arrived in Java seven
months after leaving Holland, whereas some ships had been known to be as
long as eighteen months at sea. The directors of the Dutch East India
Company, recognising the importance of the discovery, ordered their
commanders to follow the easterly route from the Cape in future, and
offered prizes to those who completed the voyage in less than nine
months. The result was that the Dutch skippers became exceedingly anxious
to make the very utmost of the favourable winds, which carried them
eastward in the direction of the western coasts of Australia.

Thus it happened that in 1616 the Eendragt stumbled on Australia opposite
Shark's Bay. Her captain, Dirk Hartog, landed on the long island which
lies as a natural breakwater between the bay and the ocean, and erected a
metal plate to record his visit; and Dirk Hartog Island is the name it
bears to this day. The pl