[* See _inter alia_ a report of a well-known functionary of the E.I.C., G. E. RUMPHUS, dated after 1685 in LEUPE Nieuw-Guinea, p. 86: "The Drooge bocht [shallow bay], where Nova-Guinea is surmised to be cut off from the rest of the Southland by a passage opening into the great South-Sea, though our men have been unable to pass through it owing to the shallows, so that it remains uncertain whether this strait is open on the other side."] The Managers of the E.I.C. did not remain content with this first attempt to obtain more light [*] as regards these regions situated to eastward, the Southland-Nova Guinea as they styled it, using an appellation characteristic of their degree of knowledge concerning it. But it was not before 1623 that another voyage was undertaken that added to the knowledge about the Gulf of Carpentaria: I mean the voyage of the ships Pera and Arnhem, commanded by Jan Carstensz. and Willem Joosten van Colstjor or Van Coolsteerdt. [**] [* See pp. 6, 7-8, 13 and note 2 _infra_.] [** See the Documents under No. XIV (pp. 21 ff.), and especially chart No. 7 on p. 46.] On this occasion, too, the south-west coast of New Guinea was first touched at, after which the ships ran on on an eastern course. Torres Strait was again left alongside, and mistaken for a Drooge bocht,[*] "into which they had sailed as into a trap," and the error of New Guinea and the present Australia constituting one unbroken whole, was in this way perpetuated. The line of the east-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, "the land of Nova Guinea", was then followed up to about 17° 8' (Staten river), whence the return-voyage was undertaken [**]. Along this coast various names were conferred. [***] [* As regards the attempts to survey and explore this shallow water, see _infra_ pp. 33-34] [** See p. 37 below.] [*** As regards this, see especially the chart on p. 46.--Cf. my Life of Tasman, pp. 99-100.] In the course of the same expedition discovery was also made of Arnhemsland on the west-coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and almost certainly also of the so-called Groote Eyland or Van der Lijns island (Van Speultsland) [*] The whole of the southern part of the gulf remained, however, unvisited. [* See my Life of Tasman, pp. 101-102; and pp. 47-48 below.] {Page vii}