Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia
A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of that Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century

An 1859 compilation of source material on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European exploration in the Southern Ocean, including Australia.

Richard Henry Major (Edited by)

9781108010023, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2010

372 pages, 6 maps
21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.47 kg

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This compilation by R. H. Major of the British Museum (published in 1859) brings together various manuscript and published sources, some of them anonymous, which provide a picture of European exploration in the Southern Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It includes passages from the writings of William Dampier, who not only surveyed part of the coast of Australia ('New Holland'), but also made detailed notes of the fauna and flora he encountered there.

Introduction
A memorial addressed to His Catholic Majesty Philip the Third, King of Spain Juan Luis Arias
Relation of Luis Vaez de Torres, concerning the discoveries of Quiros
Extract from the book of dispatches from Batavia
The voyage and shipwreck of Captain Francis Pelsart
Voyage of Gerrit Thomasz Pool to the South Land
Account of the wreck of the ship 'De Vergulde Draeck' on the South Land
Description of the West Coast of the South Land Samuel Volkersen
Extract translated from Burgomaster Witsen's Noord en Oost Tartarye
Account of the observations of Captain William Dampier on the coast of New Holland in 1686-87
Extract from Sloan MS., 3236, entitled 'The Adventures of William Dampier'
Some particulars relating to the voyage of Willem de Vlamingh to New Holland in 1696
Extract from the journal of a voyage made to the unexplored South Land, by order of the Dutch East India Company, in the years 1696 and 1697
Account of the observations of Captain William Dampier on the coast of New Holland, in 1699
A written detail of the discoveries and noticeable occurrences in the voyage of the fluyt 'Vossenbosch', the sloop 'D'Waijer', and the patsjallang 'Nova Hollandia', despatched by the government of India, anno 1705
The Houtman's Abrolhos in 1727 P. A. Leupe.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH]