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FOURTH READING BOOK.

EARLY HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA.

A.D. 1511-1691.

(De Quiros, Tasman, and Dampier.)

THOUGH to the Portuguese, from all that appears, belongs the honour of having discovered Australia between 1511 and 1529, yet the Spaniards are entitled to a share of the credit, for they continued and extended the explorations so gallantly begun by their rivals. In December 1605, Fernand de Quiros, who had been sent out on a voyage of discovery by Philip III. of Spain, gave to that king a very exaggerated account of a newly-discovered country, which he conjectured to be the great Austral or Southern Continent. In his report, he described the people as living in huts thatched with straw, and having abundance of fowls, hogs, large herds of cattle; singing birds of all kinds, bees, partridges, parrots; potatoes, plantains, oranges, limes, almonds, fruits of every variety, many previously unknown to him, but most delicious, and all of spontaneous production. He asserted that the country was as large as Europe and Asia Minor united, and that it swarmed with inhabitants, whom he represented as considerably advanced in civilisation. "The riches," he says, "which I and another captain have seen, are silver, pearls,

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and gold. We have also seen much nutmeg, mace, ginger, and pepper; there is notice of cinnamon, and it is likely that cloves may be found in those parts, since so many other spices and aromatic drugs do prosper there. There are likewise materials for all sorts of silk; we have seen aniseseed, and excellent good ebony. In a wood near the port, shall have a sweet and

at the dawning of the day, you various harmony from a thousand birds of all sorts, among which we could distinguish the notes of nightingales, blackbirds, quails, goldfinches, swallows almost without number, parroquets, and one kind of parrot."

But it was Abel Janez Tasman, the great Dutch navigator, who, in the year 1642, first descried and landed upon the coast of the country which now bears his name, but which he himself called after his patron, Anthony Van Diemen, the Dutch Governor of Batavia. He landed near what he named Frederick Henry's Bay on the 1st of December, in the height of summer; and he says he heard the sound of human voices, but saw nobody.

"All I saw," he writes, "worth observing, were two trees, which were two fathoms, or two fathoms and a half, in girth, and sixty or sixty-five feet high, from the root to the branches. They (the natives) had cut, with a flint, a kind of steps in the bark, in order to climb up to the birds' nests. These steps were at the distance of five feet from each other, so that we must conclude either that these people are of a prodigious size, or that they have some way of climbing trees that we are not used to. In one of the trees the steps were so fresh that we judged they could not have been cut above four days.

"The noise we heard resembled the noise of some sort of trumpet; it seemed to be at no great distance, but we saw no living creature, notwithstanding. I perceived, also,

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