touched at the north-west coast of Australia. This period embraces the
very famous, at all events remarkable, voyages of Jan Carstensz (1623),
of Pool and Pieterszoon (1636), of Tasman (1642-1644), of Van der Wall
(1678), etc.

The last period with which we wish to deal, lies between Dampier's
arrival and Cook's first visit to these regions (1688-1769), and is of
secondary importance so far as Dutch discoveries are concerned. We may
just mention Willem de Vlamingh's voyage of 1696-1697, and Maerten van
Delft's of 1705; Gonzal's expedition (1756) is not quite without
significance, but the results obtained in these voyages will not bear
comparison with those achieved by the expeditions of the preceding
period. Besides this, the English navigator Dampier and afterwards
Captain Cook now began to inscribe their names on the rolls of history,
and those names quite legitimately outshine those of the Dutch navigators
of _the eighteenth century_. The palmy days of Dutch discovery fell in
_the seventeenth century_.

In some such fashion the history of the Dutch wanderings and explorations
on the coasts of Australia might be divided into chronological periods.
The desire of being clear has, however, led me to adopt another mode of
treatment in this Introduction: I shall one after another discuss the
different coast-regions discovered and touched at by the Netherlanders.

III.

THE NETHERLANDERS IN THE GULF OF CARPENTARIA[*]

[* As regards the period extending from 1595-1644, see also my Life of
Tasman, Ch. XII, pp. 88ff.]