Going from island to island and everywhere meeting with the same sort of long-haired, vigorous-looking men, Tasman now sailed in a south-western direction. He spent several weeks between the Fiji Islands and the group now called Samoa. During all this time his ships were in grave danger of running upon the hidden reefs which are plentiful in this part of the Pacific. At last the winter began to approach and the weather grew more and more unstable, and as the ships after their long voyage were in need of a safe harbor and repair, it was decided to try and return within the confines of the map of the known and explored world. Accordingly the ships sailed westward and discovered several islands of the Solomon group, sailed through the Bismarck Archipelago, as it is called now, and after several months reached the northern part of New Guinea, which they, too, supposed to be the northern coast of the large continent of which they had touched the shores at so many spots, but which instead of the promised Ophir was a dreary, flat land surrounded by little islands full of cocoanuts, natives, and palm-trees, but without a scrap of either gold or silver. [Illustration] Tasman then found himself in well-known regions. He made straightway for Batavia, and on the fifteenth of June of the year 1644 he landed to report his adventures to the governor-general and the council of the Indian Company. A few months later he was sent out upon a new expedition, this time with three ships. He made a detailed investigation of the northern coast of the real Australian continent. He sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria. He found the Torres Strait, which he supposed to be a bay between New Guinea and Australia,--for the report of the Torres discovery in 1607 was as yet in the dusty archives of Manila, and had not been given to the world,--and once more he returned by way of the western coast of New Guinea to inform the governor-general that whatever continent he had found produced nothing which could be of any material profit to the Dutch East India Company. In short, New Holland, as Australia was then called, was not settled by the Hollanders because it had no immediate commercial value. After this last voyage no further expeditions were sent out to look for the supposed Southern Continent. From the reports of several ships which had reached the west coast of Australia and from the information brought home by Tasman it was decided that whatever land there might still be hidden between the 110 and 111 degree of longitude, offered no inducements to a respectable trading company which looked for gold and silver and spices, but had no use for kangaroos and the duck-billed platypus. New Holland was left alone until the growing population of the European continent drove other nations to explore this part of the world once more a hundred and twenty years later. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI ROGGEVEEN, THE LAST OF THE GREAT VOYAGERS