In 1617 appeared a work, the title of which renders some mention of it in this place necessary. It was entitled “_Mundus alter et idem, sive Terra Australis antehac semper incognita longis itineribus peregrini academici nuperrime lustrata._ Hanau, 1617.” The book bearing this delusive title was by Bishop Joseph Hall. It was in reality an invective against the characteristic vices of various nations, from which it is said that Swift borrowed the idea of _Gulliver’s Travels_. A strange blunder has been made by the Abbé Prevost, tom. ii, p. 201, of his _Histoire des Voyages_, 4to. ed., and by the President de Brosses, in his _Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes_, tom. i, p. 432; and copied by Callander in his unacknowledged translation from De Brosses, to the effect that in the year 1618, one Zeachen, a native of Arnheim, discovered the land called Arnheim’s Land, and Van Diemen’s Land on the N. coast of Australia, in about the latitude of 14°. He proceeds to say that Diemen’s Land owes its name to Anthony Van Diemen, at that time general of the Dutch East India Company, who returned to Europe with vast riches in 1631. The blunder is easily demonstrable. Zeachen, or as it is also given, Zechaen, is a form of word plainly irreconcileable with the genius of the Dutch language, and is an evident misspelling for Zeehaen, which is the name not of a man, but of a ship, the _Sea-hen_. No such voyage is mentioned in the recital of discoveries which preface the instructions to Tasman, nor is there any notice of the north coast of New Holland having been visited by the Dutch in that year. Moreover Van Diemen, as we learn from the _Vies des Gouverneurs Généraux avec l’abrégé de l’histoire des établissemens Hollandois_ by Dubois, was not governor general until January 1st, 1636, and it is observable that one of the ships employed in Tasman’s voyage in 1642, in which he discovered the island now known as Tasmania, but to which he, out of compliment, gave the name of the governor general, Van Diemen, was called the Zeehaen, from which in all probability, by some complication of mistakes, the mis-statement here made has originated. The _Mauritius_, an outward bound ship, appears to have made some discoveries upon the west coasts, in July 1618, particularly of Willem’s River, near the north-west cape, but no further particulars are known.