EARLY AUSTRALIAN VOYAGES
BY JOHN PINKERTON


Contents:

Introduction
Pelsart
Tasman
Dampier




INTRODUCTION.


In the days of Plato, imagination found its way, before the mariners, to
a new world across the Atlantic, and fabled an Atlantis where America now
stands. In the days of Francis Bacon, imagination of the English found
its way to the great Southern Continent before the Portuguese or Dutch
sailors had sight of it, and it was the home of those wise students of
God and nature to whom Bacon gave his New Atlantis. The discoveries of
America date from the close of the fifteenth century. The discoveries of
Australia date only from the beginning of the seventeenth. The
discoveries of the Dutch were little known in England before the time of
Dampier's voyage, at the close of the seventeenth century, with which
this volume ends. The name of New Holland, first given by the Dutch to
the land they discovered on the north-west coast, then extended to the
continent and was since changed to Australia.