Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

296 AUSTRALASIA.mariners, such as William Jansz, who, in IGOO, reached Ihe Aru Archipelago andthe south-west side of New Guinea. Ten years later, Le Mairc and Schoutcndiscovered the Schoutcn Islands, north of Geelvink Bay, and in 1G23 Carstenszadvanced as far as Valsche Kaap at the extremity of the island of FrederikHendrik. Other seafarers, amongst whom Tasraan, also visited the north andsouth coasts : yet, at the close of the seventeenth century, Papuasia was still solittle known that its western end was quite wrongly described by Rumphius, whoeven extends it to the north of the equator.Attention was again attracted to the great island by the fear that the Englishmight succeed in founding settlements on the seaboard and deprive the DutchCompany of their monopoly of the spice trade. Dampier had, in fact, alreadycoasted the north side, and determined the independent insular character ofNew Britain and New Ireland Archipelagoes.theHence Wijland was despatched tothe same waters, and the northern seaboard was traced to its eastern extremity,and even beyond it to the Massim or Louisiade Archipelago, which was at thattime supposed to form part of the mainland. Yet old Spanish charts studied byE. T. Ilamy and carefully compared with the Dutch documents, show that Torresand his precursors in the sixteenth ccnturj^ had already determined, in a generalway, the form of the eastern section of New Guinea.The era of modern exploration in these regions begins with Cook'sexpedition.Before the close of the eighteenth century, Forrest, MacCluer, and d'Entrecasteauxsi;/veyed long stretches of the seaboard. But the Napoleonic wars interruptedthese peaceful operations, which were not resumed till the general pacification.Duperrey, Dumont d'Urville, and Belcher were amongst the first navigatorswho then found their way to the New Guinea waters. Kolff sailed through thestrait between the island of Frederik Hendrik supposing it to be a river, and in1828, this explorer founded on Triton Bay, over against the Aru Archipelago, thefirst military station occupied by Europeans on the Papuan seaboard.afterwards abandoned owing to the insalubrityFort Bus,of the district, was thus the commencementof the work of annexation, which has since been prosecuted slowly butirresistibly.In the same year, 1828, the Dutch Government officially announcedthe formal possession of the great island as far as 141° east longitude, substitutingthroughout that region the sovereignty of Holland for that of her vassal, thesultan of Tidor.Meanwhile the greater part of the interior remains still imexplored. Learnednaturalists, such as Jukes, Wallace, Cerruti, Beccari, d'Albertis, Bernstein, Meyer,Raffray, and Forbes, have already penetrated at different points considerable distancesinland.But despite these isolated efforts, the physical features of the land,with its popidations, products, and natural resources, still remain almost lessknown than those of any other region of the globe. Long journeys are renderedextremely difficult, and often impossible bj^ the malarious climate of the coastlands,ihe total absence of stations on the breezy plateaux of the interior, and the oftentoo well grounded hostility of the natives, who justly distrust the white strangerscoming with a revolver in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other.To complete