the manner how, and time when it acquired its name.* The east side of the
Gulph had been explored to the latitude of 17°, and many rivers were
there marked and named; but how far the representation given of it by the
Dutch was faithful--what were the productions, and what its
inhabitants--were, in a great measure, uncertain. Or rather it was
certain, that those early navigators did not possess the means of fixing
the positions and forms of lands, with any thing like the accuracy of
modern science; and that they could have known very little of the
productions, or inhabitants. Of the rest of the Gulph no one could say,
with any confidence, upon what authority its form had been given in the
charts; so that conjecture, being at liberty to appropriate the Gulph of
Carpentaria to itself, had made it the entrance to a vast arm of the sea,
dividing Terra Australis into two, or more, islands.

[* I am aware that the president de Brossed says, "This same year also
(1628) CARPENTARIA was thus named by P. Carpenter, who discovered it when
general in the service of the Dutch Company. He returned from India to
Europe, in the month of June 1628, with five ships richly laden." (_Hist.
des Nav. aux Terres Aust_. Tome I. 433). But the president here seems to
give either his own, or the Abbé' Prevost's conjectures, for matters of
fact. We have seen, that the coast called Carpentaria was discovered long
before 1628; and it is, besides, little probable, that Carpenter should
have been making discoveries with five ships richly laden and homeward
bound. This name of Carpentaria does not once appear in Tasman's
Instructions, dated in 1644; but is found in Thevenot's chart of 1663.]

3rd. _A more exact investigation of the bays, shoals, islands, and coasts
of ARNHEM'S, and the northern VAN DIEMEN'S, LANDS_. The information upon
these was attended with uncertainty; first, because the state of
navigation was very low at the time of their discovery; and second, from