From their colony at Java they sent out a small vessel, the Duyfhen, or Dove, which sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and passed half-way down along its eastern side. Some sailors landed, but so many of them were killed by the natives that the captain was glad to embark again and sail for home, after calling the place of their disaster Cape Keer-weer, or Turnagain. These Dutch sailors were the first Europeans, as far as can now be known, who landed on Australian soil; but as they never published any account of their voyage, it is only by the merest chance that we know anything of it.

5. Other Dutch Discoverers.—During the next twenty years various Dutch vessels, while sailing to the settlements in the East Indies, met with the coast of Australia. In 1616 Dirk Hartog landed on the island in Shark Bay which is now called after him. Two years later Captain Zaachen is said to have sailed along the north coast, which he called Arnhem Leeuwin, or Lioness, sailed along the southern coast, and its name was given to the south-west cape of Australia. In 1627 Peter Nuyts entered the Great Australian Bight, and made a rough chart of some of its shores; in 1628 General Carpenter sailed completely round the large gulf to the north, which has taken its name from this circumstance. Thus, by degrees, all the northern and western, together with part of the southern shores, came to be roughly explored, and the Dutch even had some idea of colonising this continent.

6. Tasman.—During the next fourteen years we hear no more of voyages to Australia; but in 1642 Antony Van Diemen, the Governor of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, sent out his friend Abel Jansen Tasman, with two ships, to make new discoveries in the South Seas. Tasman first went to the Island of Bourbon, from which he sailed due south for a time; but finding no signs of land, he turned to the east, and three months after setting out he saw a rocky shore in the distance.