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Updated: June 13, 2025
John, which were likewise discovered by Schovten and Le Maire. This island they found to be of a considerable extent, and judged it to lie at the distance of one thousand eight hundred and forty leagues from the coast of Peru. It appeared to them well inhabited and well cultivated, abounding with flesh, fowl, fish, fruit, and other refreshments.
After these follow Schovten and Le Maire, who were fitted out to make discoveries; and executed their commission with equal capacity and success.
On the 12th of May, being then in the latitude of 54 minutes south, and in the longitude of 153 degrees 17 minutes, we found the variation 6 degrees 30 minutes to the east. We continued coasting the north side of the island of William Schovten, which is about eighteen or nineteen miles long, very populous, and the people very brisk and active.
In the neighbourhood of this island Schovten also met with an earthquake, which alarmed the ship's company excessively, from an apprehension that they had struck upon a rock. There are some other islands in the neighbourhood of this, well peopled, and well planted, abounding with excellent fruits, especially of the melon kind.
This was, very probably, owing to the ill-usage he met with from the Dutch East India Company; which put Captain Schovten, and the relations of Le Maire, upon giving the world the best information they could of what had been in that voyage performed.
Captain Tasman, indeed, visited the coast of New Zealand, in the latitude of 42 degrees 10 minutes south, and in the longitude of 188 degrees 28 minutes; but besides this, and the islands of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, we know very little; and therefore, if there be any doubts about the reality of Terra Australis, it must be with respect to that part of it which lies within this quarter, through which Schovten and Le Maire sailed, but without discovering anything more than a few small islands.
These people do not deserve to be treated as savages, because Schovten acknowledges that they had been engaged in commerce with the Spaniards; as appeared by their having iron pots, glass beads, and pendants, with other European commodities, before he came thither.
This description agrees very well with that of Schovten and Le Maire, so that probably they had now sight again of the coast of New Guinea.
We were then in the height of the islands of Mark, which were discovered by William Schovten and James le Maire. They are fourteen or fifteen in number, inhabited by savages, with black hair, dressed and trimmed in the same manner as those we saw before at the Bay of Murderers in New Zealand. On the 29th we passed the Green Islands, and on the 30th that of St.
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