s of reading and writing,
accomplishments in little vogue at this time. Hence it comes that I am
able to set down here a record of perils and adventures by sea and land
which may prove entertaining reading to those who have never travelled
beyond the limits of their own countries.

My parents, who had stinted themselves to provide my education, placed
me when I was eighteen years old in a merchant's office at Amsterdam,
where I became acquainted with Dirk Hartog, a famous navigator, who, a
year later, invited me to become his secretary and engraver of charts
on board the ship "Endraght", being then commissioned for a voyage of
discovery to the South, and having obtained a reluctant consent from my
master, De Decker, the merchant, to Hartog's proposal I gladly
abandoned the office desk for the sea.

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 had given rise
to a theory that a vast continent known as Terra Australis existed in
the South, and Portuguese and Spanish ships had made report from time
to time of this southern land. It was to confirm or dispel this belief
that the voyage of Dirk Hartog was made.

For many months after leaving Amsterdam we sailed south, touching at
some islands to obtain vegetable food and replenish our water-casks.
Worn out with hardship, our crew more than once showed signs of mutiny.
Sometimes for weeks together we lay becalmed in the tropics, when the
air hung like a pall of vapour from the sky, and the pitch boiled and
blistered in the seams of the deck-planks. In other seasons we were
driven by storm and stress. But at length, in spite of every obstacle,
an unbroken coast stretched before us far as the eye could reach. For
three days we sailed past verdure-covered hills, white, sandy beaches,
and bluff headlands, until Hartog felt assured the Great South
Continent was at last in very truth before him.

The day upon which Hartog determined to land was bright and fine; the
place a sandy beach upon which the waves broke in frothy spume. We were
all keen to be ashore after so long a spell of the sea, and I reckoned
myself in luck to be chosen as one of the boat's crew to land the
captain.

"Let Peter come," said Hartog when the boat was alongside. "I would
have him engrave a plate to be set in some safe place, so that it may
be known that I, Dirk Hartog, landed here, to any who may come after
me."

When we had come to the shore Hartog, taking the boat's crew with him,
set