VII.

(1616). VOYAGE OF DE EENDRACHT UNDER COMMAND OF DIRK HARTOGS(ZOON). DISCOVERY OF THE WEST-COAST OF AUSTRALIA IN 1616: DIRK HARTOGS ISLAND AND -ROAD, LAND OF THE EENDRACHT OR EENDRACHTSLAND.

A.

_Letter of Supercargo Cornelis Buysero at Bantam to the Managers of the East India Company at Amsterdam._

Worshipful, Wise, Provident, very Discreet Gentlemen,...

...The ship Eendracht [*], with which they had sailed from the Netherlands, after communicating at the Cabo sailed away from them so far southward as to come upon 6 various islands which were, however, found uninhabited [**]...

[* Commanded by Dirk Hartogs, or Hartogszoon.]

[* What "uninhabited islands" the ship Eendracht "came upon", Buysero's letter does not say. Various authentic archival documents of 1618 and subsequent years, however, go to show that the land afterwards named Eendrachtsland or Land van de Eendracht, and the Dirk Hartogsreede (island) must have been discovered on this voyage.]

Bantam, this last day of August, A.D. 1617. Your Worships' servant to command CORNELIS BUYSERO [*]

[* Buysero was supercargo at Bantam (DE JONGE, Opkcornst, IV, p. 68,) and was therefore likely to be well informed as to the adventures of the ship, which had sailed from the Netherlands in January 1616, departed from the Cape of Good Hope in the last days of August, and had arrived in India in December of the same year, as appears from what Steven Van der Haghen, Governor of Amboyna, writes May 26, 1617: "That in the month of December 1616, the ship Eendracht entered the narrows between Bima and the land of Endea near Guno Api (Goenoeng Api) in the south of Java" (Sapi Straits).]

B.

_See infra Document No. IX, of 1618._

It proves that as early as 1618 the name of Eendrachtsland was known in the Netherlands.