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Updated: June 7, 2025
Dalrymple held that this land discovered by Tasman was the west coast of the looked-for Terra Australis Incognita, and his theory was now shattered. Nearing the coast a bay was discovered into which the ship sailed, and let go her anchor near the mouth of a small river, not far from where the town of Guisborne now stands.
Van Diemen's Land was discovered in 1642, by the Dutchman, Tasman, who first sailed round its southern point, and ascertained that the great Southern Land, or Australia, did not extend, as it had been supposed, to the South Pole. The island was apparently overlooked, until, in 1804, a colony was founded there by the English, and it was taken possession of in the name of his Britannic majesty.
In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions, signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio van Diemen, begin with a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this document an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made.
It did not seem fitting to the great Wolfhound that his brave, lissom mate should be moved to precisely that shuddering kind of shoulder movement by the sight of any living thing, and, now, before following her into the den, he stepped well forward to the edge of the flat rock and barked fierce defiance in the direction of old Tasman and his redoubtable son.
They were, however, very intractable, notwithstanding all the pains that could be taken to engage them in a fair correspondence, so that Captain Schovten was at last obliged to fire upon them to prevent them from making themselves masters of his vessel, which they attacked with a great deal of vigour; and very probably this was the reason that Captain Tasman did not attempt to land or make any farther discovery.
He shuddered as he strove to estimate how many beds he owned, how many blankets he had bought. And all the beds and blankets would not buy one man to come from the end of the earth, and grip his hand, and cry, "By the turtles of Tasman!" Something of all this he told Polly, an undercurrent of complaint at the unfairness of things in his tale. And she had answered: "It couldn't have been otherwise.
It came from W.S.W., and went to E.N.E. We proceeded eight or ten miles along its banks before we came to fresh water. In its immediate neighbourhood, the country was beautifully grassed, and openly timbered with bloodwood, stringy-bark, the leguminous Ironbark, and the white-barked tree of the Abel Tasman.
He wrote to King telling him that if he had wanted to annex Van Diemen's Land he would have made no secret of it, that Tasman anyhow had not discovered it for the benefit of Englishmen only, and that
But Justice caught him on the way. He and his ship were taken by an American privateer. Ruatara gained his home at the next attempt. There he laboured to civilize his countrymen, planted and harvested wheat, and kept in touch with Marsden across the Tasman Sea. Meanwhile the latter's official superiors discountenanced his venturesome New Zealand project.
After that he had gone on his way to mend trouble on the atoll of Tasman, where a plague of black measles had broken out and been ascribed to Grief's plantation by the devil-devil doctors. Once, a year later, he had been called back again to straighten up New Gibbon; and Koho, after paying a forced fine of two hundred thousand cocoanuts, decided it was cheaper to keep the peace and sell the nuts.
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