I cannot help remarking upon this part of Captain Tasman's journal, that
it is not easy to conceive, unless he was bound up by leis instructions,
why he did not remain some time either at Rotterdam or at Amsterdam
Island, but especially at the former; since, perhaps, there is not a
place in the world so happily seated, for making new discoveries with
ease and safety. He owns that he traversed the whole island, that he
found it a perfect paradise, and that the people gave him not the least
cause of being diffident in point of security; so that if his men had
thrown up ever so slight a fortification, a part of them might have
remained there in safety, while the rest had attempted the discovery of
the Islands of Solomon on the one hand, or the continent of De Quiros on
the other, from neither of which they were at any great distance, and,
from his neglecting this opportunity, I take it for granted that he was
circumscribed, both as to his course and to the time he was to employ in
these discoveries, by his instructions, for otherwise so able a seaman
and so curious a man as his journal shows him to have been, would not
certainly have neglected so fair an opportunity.



CHAPTER XI: AND AN ARCHIPELAGO OF TWENTY SMALL ISLANDS.


On February 6th, being in 17 degrees 19 minutes of south latitude, and in
the longitude of 201 degrees 35 minutes, we found ourselves embarrassed
by nineteen or twenty small islands, every one of which was surrounded
with sands, shoals, and rocks. These are marked in the charts by the
name of Prince William's Islands, or Heemskirk's Shallows. On the 8th we
were in the latitude of 15 degrees 29 minutes, and in the longitude of
199 degrees 31 minutes. We had abundance of rain, a strong wind from the