Explore "The Discovery of Tasmania, New Zealand, and Bass' Straits" by C.T. Burfitt on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The work of preparing the following account of the discovery, by Tasman, of the sixth state of the Australian Commonwealth has been undertaken not only with a view to reviving history known to but few of the present generation, and assist in justifying the Society's title to bear the name it does, but also to remind our people of a man whose name must ever hold a high place on the scroll of honour to those men who braved every danger on sea and land to give to us the great territories we now possess.
Abel Janszoon Tasman was unquestionably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the navigators between Magellan, (who, in the early years of the 16th century first crossed the Pacific Ocean), and Cook, who in the latter years of the eighteenth century practically opened Oceania and Australia to Europe.