"Cependant ils avoient trois a quatre cents lieues de chemin a faire, pour terrir a la cote septentrionale de la grande Java. On peut assez s'imaginer a quelles soufrances ils furent exposez dans un tel batiment, pendent une telle route, et avec si-peu de vivres, et si-mauvais. Par le beau tems ils voguoient encore passablement; mais quand la mer etoit grosse, les lames les couvroient et passoient par-dessus leurs tetes, et la chaloupe etoit toujours sur le point de se voir submergee. "Mais la plus cruelle avanture fut que les limacons se corrompirent, et il n'y eut plus moien d'en manger, si-bien que pour tout aliment il ne resta que de l'eau. La nuit il faisoit un froid insuportable, et le jour on etoit brule des ardeurs du Soleil. Toute esperance de salut sembloit etre retranchee, et les fatigues, aussi-bien que le manque de nourriture, avoient entierement epuise les forces de ces infortunes, lors-qu'un matin ils decouvrirent les montagnes meridionales de la grande Java." This ship was probably wrecked in the neighbourhood of Dampier's Archipelago, near which there is also an account of the loss of a ship called the Vianen.) The first circumstantial account that we have is that of Dampier; who, in his celebrated Buccaneering Voyage in the year 1688, visited that part of the North-West Coast, to which the name of Cygnet Bay has been attached: of this place he gives a faithful and correct account, particularly with respect to its productions, and the savage and degraded state of its inhabitants: the same navigator afterwards (in 1699) visited the West and North-west Coasts in His Majesty's ship Roebuck, in the description of which he has not only been very minute and particular, but, as far as we could judge, exceedingly correct. Within the last fifty years the labours of Cook, Vancouver, Bligh, D'Entrecasteaux, Flinders, and Baudin have gradually thrown a considerable light upon this extraordinary continent, for such it may be called. Of these and other voyages that were made during the 17th and 18th centuries to various parts of its coasts, an account is given by the late Captain Flinders, in his introduction to the Investigator's voyage; in which, and in that able and valuable work of the late Rear-Admiral Burney, A Chronological Account of Discoveries in the South Sea and Pacific Ocean, the history of its progressive discovery is amply detailed.