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MRS. WILTON. "Yes, my dear; and the part nearest to it is New South Wales, from which it is separated by Bass's Straits, which are 100 miles broad, and contain a great many small islands. Van Diemen's Land was discovered by Tasman, in 1644, and named by him in honor of the Dutch Governor-General of the East Indies: but it is now more appropriately called Tasmania.
It happened that all these problems of coastline geography, if we may so call it, were destined to be solved by one man, an Englishman named JAMES COOK, who, with Prince Henry, Magellan, and Tasman, may be said to have determined the limits of the habitable land.
It is, secondly, observable, that as New Guinea, Carpentaria, and New Holland, had been already pretty well examined, Captain Tasman fell directly to the south of these; so that his first discovery was Van Diemen's Land, the most southern part of the continent on this side the globe, and then passing round by New Zealand, he plainly discovered the opposite side of that country towards America, though he visited the islands only, and never fell in again with the continent till he arrived on the coast of New Britain, which he mistook for that of New Guinea, as he very well might; that country having never been suspected to be an island, till Dampier discovered it to be such in the beginning of the present century.
Having finished this part of his task, he thought it would be a pity, with so fine a ship and crew, not to make some discoveries in these little-known seas. He sailed south for a time without meeting land; then, turning west, he reached those islands of New Zealand which had been first seen by Tasman. But Cook made a far more complete exploration than had been possible to Tasman.
This place we concluded to be the land discovered by Tasman, which he called Cape Maria van Diemen, and finding these people so intelligent, we enquired farther, if they knew of any country besides their own: They answered, that they never had visited any other, but that their ancestors had told them, that to the N.W. by N. or N.N.W. there was a country of great extent, called Ulimaroa, to which some people had sailed in a very large canoe; that only part of them returned, and reported, that after a passage of a month they had seen a country where the people eat hogs.
Between the mouths of the Mokau and Patea rivers a distance which cannot be much more than one hundred miles of coast no less than eighty-five streams empty themselves into the Tasman Sea, of which some sixty have their source on the slopes or in the chasms of Mount Egmont.
At 6 saw the land bearing North-East distant about 6 Leagues which we judge to be the same as Tasman calls Cape Maria Van Dieman; at Noon it bore North-North-East 1/2 East and we could see the land extend to the East and Southward as far as South-East by East. Our Latitude by observation 34 degrees 50 minutes South. Sunday, 31st.
Carpenter was the next navigator, and all these adventurers have indelibly affixed their names to portions of the coast of the land they discovered. The next, and a greater than these, at least greater in his navigating successes, was Abel Janz Tasman, in 1642.
The islands of New Zealand, discovered by the Dutch navigator, Tasman, in 1642, and surveyed and explored by Captain Cooke in 1769, remained unnoticed until 1814, when the first Christian Missionaries landed, and commenced the work of converting the inhabitants, who, up to that time had been cannibals.
The land thus discovered received the name of Staaten Land, soon changed into that of New Zealand. On the 21st January, 1643, Tasman discovered the islands of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, upon which he found a great quantity of pigs, fowls, and fruit.
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