INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS,

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December 29ft, and they continued on thefe coafts to February 1698. According totheir account, it is the moft miferable country on the globe ; fo that Dampier had reafonto fay, that the Hottentots of the Cape were lords when compared to the inhabitants ofNew Holland.

I 7 ° 5 *l The firft of March 1705, three Dutch fhips failed from Timor , with-ordersto examine the north coaft of New Holland more exadlly than had hitherto been done.They noted the fhoals, bay, and rocks upon this coaft. In their route they met withno lands, excepting fome rocks lying above water in 11 degrees 52 minutes fouthlatitude. They faw the weft coaft of New Holland in 4 degrees to the eaft of the eaftpoint of Timor . Hence they continued their courfe to the northward, pafling by a largefhoal which lies above water in fome places, and extends more than five German leagues.Hence they flood to the eaft along the coaft of New Holland, obferving every thing ascarefully as poffible. But this is all the account we can give of their difcovery.

In this year 1705, the Dutch alfo fent out a yacht, called the Yellow Pinton, forthe difcovery of the fouth-eaft coaft of New Guinea , the fituation of which they foundvery different from what it is reprefented in the common maps. They mention theirhaving found feveral places inhabited, fuch as what they called Red Point; anotherat a place called Waba; another at Green Point, where they found goodanchorage and frefh water. Here one of their failors was killed by the natives.From another place they brought away four men and three women. Two of themen efcaped, and they fet the women at liberty. Le Brun, a famous painter andtraveller, being at Batavia, when this veflel returned, has given us the figure of oneof thefe favages drawn from life, with his bow and arrows in his hand, in his fecondvolume p. 338.*

The file of the Papous, near New Guinea , belongs to the King of Tidore. Valentine,in his account of the Eaft Indies, Part III. p. 47, fpeaks fo confufedly of this diftrict,that it appears his knowledge of it was but imperfect, and his chart of it is very faulty.He lays down the weft part of that country as totally unknown, and places on the northfhore many of the names that belong to the fouth. The ordinary maps lay down theland of the Papous as contiguous to New Guinea , in which they are generallyfollowed for want of better information. But it is now known, that this diftrift iscompofed of many iflands, the northernmoft of which lie within our hemifphere.Thefe ifles extend over three degrees of latitude, from the continent of New Guinea to the ifland Halamahera, commonly called Gilolo , and by the favages, “ TheMother of Countries,” to diftinguifh it from the fmall ifles which lie round it.Dampier’s chart is not good, where he reprefents the fouthern iflands of the Papous as making part of the continent of New Guinea .

The ifles called Aroua belong to Banda, and ever fince the year 1623 theyhave been under the dominion of the Dutch Eaft India Company. Thefe ifles arewell laid down in D’Anville’s map of Afia, published in the year 1752; only hementions but four, when in reality there are fix of them. Arou is a low flat country,interfered with feveral fait creeks, the banks of which are covered with mangroves.

* It is remarkable, that the figure of this favage from New Guinea , as given by Le Brun, perfectlyrefembles that of the African Negroes, though thefe two countries lie at a vaft diitance from each other,and the interjacent regions are peopled with inhabitants of a quite different form. We fhall have occafionto afiign afterwards the moft; probable caufes of this wonderful refemblance betwixt two natious who ft'J*continue in the original ftate of favage nature, and can never be fuppofed to have had any intercourfe witheach other. Probably it was from this refemblance of the inhabitants of this part of Auftralafia to theAfrican negroes, that this country received the name of New Guinea . ^