The voyages of Captain Cook, whose name ranks high amongst the pioneers of our Empire, and who discovered and named many of the island groups as well as the east coast of Australia, where he hoisted the British flag, really firmly established British interests in the South Seas, after strenuous struggles with the Dutch who regarded the area as most particularly their "sphere of influence." Through the last decades of the eighteenth century British influence and prestige grew, and the apathy of the statesmen at home was not allowed by their sons on the spot to interfere with energetic development and settlement which proceeded apace. Coming rather late in the day, France was, through private British enterprise, forestalled in her principal designs which were centred on New Zealand, and her "protection" was only extended to some small island groups such as New Caledonia, lying between Australia and Fiji, and for which she found use as penal establishments. The big prizes of the Pacific--Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand--had fallen to the heritage of Great Britain, and development rather concentrated on these magnificent offshoots of British oak. There were other important groups of islands, however, which, although locally regarded as natural adjuncts of the Australian Settlements, were not definitely taken possession of. The most important of these were New Guinea and the Samoan group. New Guinea is divided from the Queensland province of Australia by the shoal-dotted Torres Straits, about 90 miles wide; while the Samoan Islands lie east of Fiji. The Portuguese Magellan was the first discoverer in the sixteenth century of New Guinea (also known as Papua), while the new name appears to have been given to the island by Ortiz de Retez, who laid down certain points. During the centuries succeeding, New Guinea received frequent visitors representing European nations, amongst them Captain Cook and Tasman, whose name is perpetuated in Tasmania though the island for many years bore the name of his lieutenant, Van Diemen, and was known as "Van Diemen's Land." New Guinea was also frequently visited by Chinese fishing junks in search of bêche-de-mer, or trepang. The Dutch from their adjacent settlements in Java and Borneo were supreme in the north of New Guinea without exercising any effective jurisdiction, and relied upon the difficult navigation of New Guinea waters for a continuance of their exclusiveness.