The Project Gutenberg eBook, Early Australian Voyages, by John Pinkerton,
et al, Edited by Henry Morley

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Title: Early Australian Voyages

Author: John Pinkerton

Release Date: April 13, 2005 [eBook #2660]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY AUSTRALIAN VOYAGES***

Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

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.

During the eighteenth century exploration was continued by the English.
The good report of Captain Cook caused the first British settlement to be
made at Port Jackson, in 1788, not quite a hundred years ago, and the
foundations were then laid of the settlement of New South Wales, or
Sydney. It was at first a penal colony, and its Botany Bay was a name of
terror to offenders. Western Australia, or Swan River, was first settled
as a free colony in 1829, but afterwards used also as a penal settlement;
South Australia, which has Adelaide for its capital, was first
established in 1834, and colonised in 1836; Victoria, with Melbourne for
its capital, known until 1851 as the Port Philip District, a