a chart with which they had been furnished. [**] This "open passage" can
hardly refer to anything else than Torres Strait. But in that case it is
clear that Jansz. cannot have solved the problem, but must have left it a
moot point. At all events he sailed past the strait, through which a few
months after him Luiz Vaez de Torres sailed from east to west.


[* As regards the names given on this expedition to various parts of this
coast, see my Life of Tasman, pp. 90-91, and chart No. 3 on p. 5
_infra_.]

[** See pp. 47, 66 _infra_.]

{Page vi}

Jansz. next surveyed the east-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria as far as
about 13° 45'. To this point, the farthest reached by him, he gave the
name of Kaap-Keerweer [Cape Turn-again]. That skipper Jansz. did not
solve the problem of the existence or non-existence of an open passage
between New Guinea and the land afterwards visited by him, is also proved
by the circumstance that even after his time the east-coast of the Gulf
of Carpentaria was also called New Guinea by the Netherlanders. Indeed,
throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the Dutch discoverers continued in
error regarding this point. They felt occasional doubts on this head [*]
it is true, but these doubts were not removed.

[* See _inter alia_ a report of a well-known functionary of the E.I.C.,
G. E. RUMPHUS, dated after 1685 in LEUPE Nieuw-Guinea, p. 86: "The Drooge
bocht [shallow bay], where Nova-Guinea is surmised to be cut off from the
rest of the Southland by a passage opening into the great South-Sea,