d in a chart, published by Mr. Dalrymple, Aug. 27,
1783, from a Dutch manuscript (possibly a copy of that which Struyck had
seen), a shoal, of _thirty geographic miles_ in length, is marked as
running off, from it; but incorrectly, according to Mr. Mc. Cluer. The
gulph here mentioned, was probably a deep bay in Arnhem's Land; for had
it been the Gulph of Carpentaria, some particular mention of the great
change in the direction of the coast, would, doubtless, have been made.

From this imperfect account of the voyage of these three vessels, very
little satisfactory information is obtained; and this, with some few
exceptions, is the case with all the accounts of the early Dutch
discoveries; and has usually been attributed to the monopolizing spirit
of their East-India Company, which induced it to keep secret, or to
destroy, the journals.

COOK. 1770.

The north coast of Terra Australis does not appear to have been seen by
any succeeding navigator, until the year 1770; when our celebrated
captain JAMES COOK passed through _Endeavour's Strait_, between Cape York
and the Prince of Wales' Islands; and besides clearing up the doubt
which, till then, existed, of the actual separation of Terra Australis
from New Guinea, his more accurate observations enabled geographers to
assign something like a true place to the former discoveries of the
Dutch, in these parts. Captain Cook did not land upon the main; but, at
_Possession Island_, he saw ten natives: "Nine of them were armed with
such lances as we had been accustomed to see, and the tenth had a _bow_,
and a bundle of _arrows_, which we had never seen in the possession of
the natives of this country before." *

[* _Hawkesworth's Voyages_, Vol. III. page 211.]

Mc. CLUER. 1791.

At the end of the year 1791, lieutenant JOHN Mc. CLUER of the Bombay
marine, in returning from the examination of the west side of New Guinea,
made the Land of _Arnhem_, in longitude 1351/4 deg., east of Greenwich. He then
sailed westward, along the shore, to 129 deg. 55'; when the coast was found
to take a southern direction. The point of turning is placed in 11 deg. 15'
south latitude; and is, doubtless, the Cape Van Diemen of the old charts,
and the west extremity of the north coast of Terra Australis.

It does not appear that any other account has been given of this
navigation, than the chart published by Mr. Dalrymple, in 1792. According
to it, though lieutenant Mc. Cluer constantly had soundin