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legs; for those have very short forelegs, but go jumping upon them as the others do, and, like them, are very good meat." The iguanas (or guanos, as he terms them) he found good to eat, but the sensitive stomach of a buccaneer rebelled at the idea of the harmless Australian lizard.

Water not being available, he decided on the 14th to continue his voyage north, keeping as close to the shore as he could in the hope of finding more fertile country and an abundant supply of water. From time to time he sent the boats ashore for supplies, but only once did he obtain sufficient to replenish the casks. On the 21st he reached some islands, afterwards called the Dampier Archipelago, situated off the present town of Cossack, and on the 31st again landed, some 150 miles south of his former anchorage, in Cygnet Bay. Here he had a small brush with some natives, in the course of which a sailor was speared and a native shot.

Being still greatly concerned about the shortage of water, and disgusted with the sterile nature of the land, Dampier felt compelled to abandon any further exploration of the coast. In accordance with this resolution he set sail early in September for Timor and New Guinea. On his voyage home the "Roebuck" was wrecked on the island of Ascension, but the navigator succeeded in reaching England, and in 1703 published an account of his voyage.

His observations with regard to the coast and the information he brought back concerning the country and its inhabitants have been proved to be remarkably reliable, and may be regarded as some compensation for his failure to achieve the actual objects of his mission. Whether the new land was a succession of islands or a continent was a question yet to be solved, and the passage between New Guinea and Australia was still unknown.

His unfavourable reports about the land and his opinion of its wretched inhabitants, whom he described as "the miserablest people in the world," did not give any encouragement to the Government to pursue its investigations. Consequently we hear of no further voyages under the English flag until 1770, when Captain Cook discovered and took possession of the more fertile country on the east coast.

A remark made by Dampier when seeking a passage among the islands of the archipelago that bears his name, that "among so many islands we might have found some sort of rich mineral or ambergreece," has given rise to a curious inaccuracy in many publications concerning the gold discoveries of Western Australia. It is stated that Dampier, a Dutch buccaneer, discovered gold on the north-west coast in 1688, and that on account of this discovery the Dutch charts of that region were marked "Provincia aurifera." Though the region is so marked on some of the sixteenth century Dutch charts, it is really the result of a geographical blunder, due to a misreading of part of Marco Polo's "De regionibus orientalibus." This actually refers to Lower Siam, but was ignorantly transferred by early geographers to an imaginary great southern continent. Dampier was not Dutch. Neither does he make any mention in his narrative of a discovery of gold. Had he done so it is scarcely probable that English interest in the new country would have ceased after his report.

The unpromising reports concerning the value of the new land which were brought back by Dutch navigators had the effect of causing the interest of that nation also to wane. Only one more expedition with definite instructions to explore any part of the coastline was sent out. This was in 1705, when a small fleet of three vessels made some examination of the north-west and improved the charts which Tasman had compiled.

In 1718 one Hans Purry, of Neufchâtel, published a work in which he proposed the establishment of a Dutch colonial settlement in the south-west corner near Cape Leeuwin. This idea was submitted to the authorities of the East India Company at Batavia and Amsterdam, and being declined by them was unsuc-