observation, because the weather was all that time dark and rainy. On
March 20th, in the latitude of 5 degrees 15 minutes south, and in the
longitude of 181 degrees 16 minutes, the weather being then fair, we
found the variation 9 degrees eastward. On the 22nd, in the latitude of
5 degrees 2 minutes south, and in the longitude of 178 degrees 32
minutes, we had fine fair weather, and the benefit of the east trade
wind. This day we had sight of land, which lay four miles west. This
land proved to be a cluster of twenty islands, which in the maps are
called Anthong Java. They lie ninety miles or thereabouts from the coast
of New Guinea. It may not be amiss to observe here, that what Captain
Tasman calls the coast of New Guinea, is in reality the coast of New
Britain, which Captain Dampier first discovered to be a large island
separated from the coast of New Guinea.



CHAPTER XIV: HIS ARRIVAL ON THE COAST OF NEW GUINEA.


On the 25th, in the latitude of 4 degrees 35 minutes south, and in the
longitude of 175 degrees 10 minutes, we found the variation 9 degrees 30
minutes east. We were then in the height of the islands of Mark, which
were discovered by William Schovten and James le Maire. They are
fourteen or fifteen in number, inhabited by savages, with black hair,
dressed and trimmed in the same manner as those we saw before at the Bay
of Murderers in New Zealand. On the 29th we passed the Green Islands,
and on the 30th that of St. John, which were likewise discovered by
Schovten and Le Maire. This island they found to be of a considerable
extent, and judged it to lie at the distance of one thousand eight
hundred and forty leagues from the coast of Peru. It appeared to them