having touched at the 'Great Southern Continent' as well as at the
islands of the South Seas.

The 'Place of the Painted Hands', the objective of the third voyage of
Van Bu with Dirk Hartog to New Holland, is referred to by the late Mr
Lawrence Hargrave, who made a very interesting study of picture-writings
discovered in Australia, in a collection of pamphlets entitled "Lope de
Vega", now in the possession of the Mitchell Library at Sydney. "There
are picture-writings," he says, "which have remained for hundreds of
years without any archaeologist discovering their meaning. They are
not as ancient as those on the monuments of the Egyptians, but they are
equally interesting. If they are read in the light of a message to
posterity, they may yet reveal something of surprising interest. By whom
were they chiselled? What is their meaning? The more recent discoveries
show an oval encircling a cross--the symbol of Spanish conquest. On an
ironstone rock-face on the Shoalhaven River are many 'hands.' These have
been there to the memory of the oldest inhabitant. No aboriginal will go
near them. Gold is still washed in this river, and possibly these
hands, or fingers, refer to the days worked here washing gold, or to the
number of 'quills' of gold obtained. You will understand these 'hands'
are not carved, but painted with some pigment that has withstood the
weather for some hundreds of years."

The Malays locate the Male and Female Islands visited by Van Bu, an
account of which appears in many ancient manuscripts from the twelfth
to the sixteenth century, as being the islands of Engarno, to the south
of Sumatra. Marco Polo speaks of them in his voyage round the world,
undertaken in 1271, and both Spanish and Dutch explorers refer to them
in the accounts of their travels of more recent date.