[* See my Life of Tasman, p. 103, note 10.]

Meanwhile the Managing Board of the Royal Geographical Society of the
Nether lands had resolved to publish a memorial volume on the occasion of
the Society's twenty-fifth anniversary. Among the plans discussed by the
Board was the idea of having the documents just referred to published at
the expense of the Society. The name of jubilee publication could with
complete justice be bestowed on a work having for its object once more to
throw the most decided and fullest possible light on achievements of our
forefathers in the 17th and 18th century, in a form that would appeal to
foreigners no less than to native readers. An act of homage to our
ancestors, therefore, a modest one certainly, but one inspired by the
same feeling which in 1892 led Italy and the Iberian Peninsula to
celebrate the memory of the discoverer of America, and in 1898 prompted
the Portuguese to do homage to the navigator who first showed the world
the sea-route to India.

{Page ii}

How imperfect and fragmentary even in our days is the information
generally available concerning the part borne by the Netherlanders in the
discovery of the fifth part of the world, may especially be seen from the
works of foreigners. This, I think, must in the first place, though not,
indeed, exclusively, be accounted for by the rarity of a working
acquaintance with the Dutch tongue among foreign students. On this
account the publication of the documents referred to would very
imperfectly attain the object in view, unless accompanied by a careful
translation of these pieces of evidence into one of the leading languages
of Europe; and it stands to reason that in the case of the discovery of
Australia the English language would naturally suggest itself as the most