I Cannot Help Remarking Upon This Part Of Captain Tasman's Journal,
That It Is Not Easy To Conceive, Unless He
Was bound up by leis
instructions, why he did not remain some time either at Rotterdam or
at Amsterdam Island,
But especially at the former; since, perhaps,
there is not a place in the world so happily seated, for making new
discoveries with ease and safety. He owns that he traversed the
whole island, that he found it a perfect paradise, and that the
people gave him not the least cause of being diffident in point of
security; so that if his men had thrown up ever so slight a
fortification, a part of them might have remained there in safety,
while the rest had attempted the discovery of the Islands of Solomon
on the one hand, or the continent of De Quiros on the other, from
neither of which they were at any great distance, and, from his
neglecting this opportunity, I take it for granted that he was
circumscribed, both as to his course and to the time he was to
employ in these discoveries, by his instructions, for otherwise so
able a seaman and so curious a man as his journal shows him to have
been, would not certainly have neglected so fair an opportunity.
CHAPTER XI: AND AN ARCHIPELAGO OF TWENTY SMALL ISLANDS.
On February 6th, being in 17 degrees 19 minutes of south latitude,
and in the longitude of 201 degrees 35 minutes, we found ourselves
embarrassed by nineteen or twenty small islands, every one of which
was surrounded with sands, shoals, and rocks.
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