On the 18th of May, Tasman reached the western extremity of New Guinea, having sailed entirely round the continent or island of Australia. He arrived at Batavia, whence he had started, after an absence of ten months. His expedition was the clearest and most precise of the several voyages which had been made for the discovery of the Terra Australis Incognita: few voyages, since that of Magellan, had contributed more to geographical science; for, by reducing the limits of the Terra Australis, as he did by circumnavigating the supposed continent, he did much to rid geography of its most important error. Tasman made a second voyage in 1644; but his journals and his track have been completely lost,--probably by design, as the Dutch did not make geographical researches in the interest of the world, but exclusively in that of the East India Company. By his second voyage he is believed to have determined the extent of the great Gulf of Carpentaria, which so profoundly indents the northern coast of New Holland. The portion of his discoveries relative to New Zealand and the Friendly Islands has been completed by Cook; that relative to Van Diemen's Land by d'Entrecasteaux, in his voyage in search of Lapérouse. The fragments which remain of Tasman's journals attest his reasoning powers, his nautical experience, and his unerring judgment. The Dutch never published his own account of his adventures, and the few extracts which have become public crept by accident and stealth into later works and journals of discovery. A Dutch writer thus alludes to the indifference manifested by his countrymen in regard to Tasman:--"We do not know when he was born, when he went to India, or when he returned. In our grand biographical dictionaries, where you will find every puerile detail respecting such and such musty savant, only known as a professor at some university or as a quarrelsome skirmisher of the Republic of Letters, there is no room, it seems, for the first navigator of his age." The English have proposed of late to substitute a name of their own for that of Van Diemen's Land; but the appellation of Tasmania is beginning, as we have said, for evident reasons of propriety to find a place upon modern charts and maps. [Illustration: A BUCCANEER.] CHAPTER XXXVII.