since determined to be the Endeavour Strait of Captain Cook,

At Arnhem's Land the yachts parted, the Pera continuing the voyage alone.
Crossing the head of the Gulf she followed the course of the DUYFHEN, and
passing Cape Keer-Weer, made as far south as 17 degrees, where the
Staaten River is laid down. Their report was also unfavourable, and is
summed up in the official dispatches of the company, thus:--"In this
discovery were found everywhere shallow waters and barren coasts, islands
altogether thinly peopled by divers cruel, poor, and brutal nations, and
of very little use to the Dutch East India Company." Pera Head, in the
Gulf, is another memorial of this voyage.

Now came the turn of the south coast of New Holland. In 1627, Captain
Pieter Nuyts, in his ship the GULDE ZEEPARD, accidentally touched on the
south coast. He followed it along for seven or eight hundred miles, and
bestowed on it the name of Pieter Nuyts' Land. The VIANEN sighted the
west coast in 1628, and kept in sight of it for some two hundred miles,
reporting "a foul and barren shore, green fields; and very wild, black,
barbarous inhabitants."

The wreck of the BATAVIA on Houtman's Abrolhos, in 1629, is one of the
most tragic incidents in early Australian history. The BATAVIA, commanded
by Commodore Francis Pelsart, was separated from her consorts by a storm,
and during the night of the 4th of June struck on the rocks of Frederick
Houtman. The crew and passengers were landed on one island, and two small
islets in the neighbourhood, and the ship broke up. No fresh water was
found, and Pelsart sailed in one of the boats in search of some on the
mainland. He was unsuccessful, and finally steered for Batavia.
Meanwhile, a terrible scene of riot and murder was enacted. Jerome
Cornelis, the supercargo, headed a mutiny, and those refusing to join his