out by the governor and council of Batavia, and on the 24th of November discovered and named Van Dieman's Land.
De Tasman sailed round the southern coast of Australia, and thus dissipated the erroneous supposition of its indefinite extent towards the south pole; while the fact of Van Dieman's Land being severed by a great strait from the main continent, and being a smaller island, was left undiscovered. From the period of De Tasman's voyage to the expiration of the seventeenth century, little can be learnt from the scattered notices of navigators of any part of that vast continent. The attention of the European nations had been attracted by the golden fables of South America, the sunny islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the boundless extent of the coast, trending from Florida to regions lost in everlasting snows. In 1665 the States General ordered that Western Australia should be called New Holland. In the last year of the seventeenth century, William and Mary directed that an expedition should be fitted out to prosecute further discoveries, particularly the islands north of New Holland, and the coasts of that country. The Earl of Pembroke selected Dampier to command the expedition; and the Roebuck was ordered to be fitted out for the voyage—an old, rotten, worthless man-of-war, in no way calculated for such service, and which ship sunk, in fine weather, off the Island of Ascension, on her passage home. From the time of Dampier, to when Cook in 1770 an-
