Explore "The Discovery of Van Diemen's Land in 1642" by James Backhouse Walker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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 18th practically opened Oceania and Australia to Europe.
Little is known of Tasman's personal history, except that he was born about the year 1602, at Hoorn on the Zuyder Zee, a seaport which produced many another hardy navigator. Tasman has made familiar in our seas the name of one of these fellow townsmen, the Corneliszoon Schouten, who in 1616 doubled the Cape, afterwards called the Horn in honour of the birthplace of its discoverer.