and fruits, these lands yield and produce";--the commercial interests of
the E.I.C.--and what was more natural in the case of a trading
corporation?--were to take a foremost place. Wherever possible, also
political connections were to be formed, and the countries discovered
"to be taken possession of". The authorities were even considering the
idea of at some future date "planting colonies" in some of the regions
eventually to be discovered.

Here we have the colonial policy of the E.I.C. of the period to its full
extent: commerce, increase of territory, colonies. And these ideas were
at the bottom of most of the voyages of discovery to the north-coast of
Australia before Tasman, and of Tasman's voyages themselves. The
celebrated voyage of the ship Duifken (1605-6) {Page xv} bears a
character of intentionality, and if we bear in mind that the same ship's
voyage of 1602 had for its professed object the extension of the
Company's mercantile connections, we need not be in doubt as to this
being equally the motive or one of the motives of the expedition on which
she was dispatched in 1605-6. We know, moreover, that New Guinea was then
reported "to yield abundance of gold." The three principles of colonial
policy just mentioned also underlay the voyage undertaken by Jan
Carstensz in 1623; for we know that this commander got the instructions
drawn up for the ships Haring and Hazewind, but not then carried into
effect, since these ships did not sail on their ordained expedition [*].
These principles are found set forth with more amplitude than anywhere
else in the instructions drawn up for Tasman and his coadjutors in 1642
and 1644 [**]. The voyages, then planned, were to be undertaken "for the
enlargement, increase and improvement of the Dutch East India Company's
standing and commerce in the East."

[* See below, p. 21, Note 1.]