I am indebted to Mr. B. W. Stainton for a photograph, which I introduce here as an illustration (No. 1), of certainly a room in the house, if not the room which Sir Charles so warmly admired. And, as we are dealing with interiors and be it noted that the doctor is, with very rare exceptions, possibly the sole European who is allowed the privilege of entering the andarun of a Persian's house-I think it is interesting to add the one photograph (No. 2) that I possess of a Persian

family circle. It is left to my judgment to identify the characters there depicted; and I find: the master of the house (left), his mother (right), two wives (seated in centre), seven children, seated and standing, and the confidential old family domestic peering out between the master and his eldest son. The faces are a study of some interest. The old lady has an air of perfect self-possession which empowers her to exhort the others, while the young girl to the left, alone of all the group, seems to find a touch of humour in the situation. The two boys look, one defiant, the other pensive, and apprehension and wonder are reflected from the little girl's face just below them. The one wife shows a calm confidence, while the other is conventionally bashful; and last, but not least, the master looks very uncertain of the propriety of the whole proceedings. The point never has been decided, and never will be decided, whether the veiled or unveiled woman is entitled to the palmnot of beauty-of virtue. Sir Charles M'Gregor did not move about the bazaars of Persia with his eyes shut, and he remarks (Khorassan, vol i. p. 37): "The women seem to go about the bazaars very freely, and though they are most closely veiled, I was surprised to notice that they appeared to talk to any man that they pleased. These may, of course, have been their husbands, but then they may not, as of course no male would be allowed to take off a woman's veil, however strong his suspicions might be."

Religion, distorted religion, has a great deal to answer for in the great problem of the "survival of the fittest," and in Persia, when I come across the Gabr (anglicè Guebre) or Zoroastrian, the thought crosses my mind that surely, through much tribulation and persecution, that small remnant of an ancient faith has proved its fitness in surviving at all. I know little or nothing of the Gabr myself, though my Persian studies involved the perusal of that chronicle of the Zoroastrian Kings Firdausi's Shahnama; but I am told that, like Scots and Chinamen, they are excellent gardeners.

Before I lay down my pen there is just one other point-and that an etymological one-upon which I would wish to touch. Again I take as my text-although it was really Addington Symonds (Revival of Learning, p. 267-8) that set me thinking-a passage from M'Gregor's Khorassan (vol. i. p. 39): “I went to call during my stay on the Prince of Fars, the Hissam-oo-Sooltanat, with the Resident or Balioos, as they euphoniously call him." I have a strong conviction that nothing would make that word euphonious. What would you expect from a word which appears in Ducange's Lexicon of Medieval Latin as Baillivius or Bajulivus, and which in its most pleasing state adopts the form of Bailli or Baily? Personally the title of Bailli de Suffren sounds pleasant in my ears, for de Suffren himself was a man of whom any heart-even an English one-might be proud. As for Baily or Bailo, as Addington Symonds entitles the Venetian Consul General or agent at Constantinople, I think it not improbable that the term spread from the Mediterranean through the adjoining countries, with which both the Turks and Venetians had political and commercial relations. When the Portuguese found their way round to the Persian Gulf in the early sixteenth century, I doubt not that the Portuguese agent at Hormuz was known as the Balyūz or Balyus )باليوز It was a title borne by the conventual bailiffs of the Order of the Hospitallers, these bailiffs being, as I understand, next in rank in the Order to the Grand Master himself, unless indeed the Grand Priors had precedence of them. The باليوس )Balyus) par excellence of to-day is the Resident at Bushire in the Persian Gulf, our consuls being generally known as قونسول qonsool). Finally, let me quote from Sir James Redhouse's

. (باليوس or

,

Turkish-English Lexicon (Constantinople, 1890, page 335 : balyoos, (Ital. baglis). 1. Title of the Venetian Ambassador at the Ottoman Court in olden times. 2. Title, sometimes vulgarly given to all consuls."

DIRK HARTOGS' LANDING IN AUSTRALIA.

By W. SIEBENHAAR,

Deputy Registrar-General of Western Australia.

PART I. THE DIRK HARTOGS TERCENTARY.1

BETWEEN the discovery of America and that of Australia there is, as regards almost every feature of the two events, the greatest dissimilarity. Yet there is one remarkable point of resemblance, viz., that in both cases human intelligence, having sufficient reason to be convinced of the existence of vast continents in the direction where they were ultimately found, made deliberate and strenuous efforts to reach these unexplored lands. In the discovery of America the penetration and will-power of one man, Columbus, achieved success. In that of Australia, the shrewdest and most enterprising commercial leaders of a whole nationality, the Dutch, saw their deliberate efforts rewarded after many attempts. Strange to say, although Columbus was probably far more imbued with the scientific than the commercial spirit, the result of his discovery was of the highest immediate commercial value. The discovery of Australia, on the other hand, although achieved no doubt principally for commercial ends, brought its authors the impersonal scientific reward. In speaking of the Dutch as the discoverers of Australia, I am not overlooking the probability that other nationalities may have sighted her coasts before; but as no records of real value have been left, such visits can have no more significance than the indications that vikings and other bold sailors probably reached America long before Columbus.

To examine the claims put forward on behalf of other nationalities is to prove their indefiniteness. Cornelis Wytfliet's book, published in 1597, has been adduced as conclusive proof that Australia was known prior to what may be termed authenticated accounts. Now when it is pointed out that this book gives Terra Australis as beginning at 2° or 3° from the Equator, it surely is evident that New Guinea was indicated, and that, as regards Australia, Wytfliet merely reproduced the vague conjectures found on other charts of the period. Old manuscripts have been found bearing in some features a slight resemblance to parts of the Australian coast, but no latitudes appear to be shown. One point alone is distinctly in favour of a Portuguese claim to discovery, the fact that the name "Abrolhos" is given on one of these maps. On the other hand, it has been argued that this name, meaning "Look out," was used by the Portuguese for shoals and other places dangerous to navigation, and was therefore applied by them to more than one such spot, in the same way as the Dutch gave the name "Keerweer" repeatedly when coming to a cape which compelled them to turn about. If the Portuguese or Spanish had any real knowledge of the Australian coast, they certainly never showed any perseverance in turning that knowledge to further account. Nor, in modern times, do they appear to be seriously concerned about their claim to priority. Repeated efforts, on the part of Mr. Malcolm A. C. Fraser, when Registrar-General of Western Australia, to obtain information on the point from the authorities at Lisbon and Madrid, remained unsuccessful, no answer even having been vouchsafed in either case. Both France and Holland, on the contrary, have most readily responded to similar inquiries, and it does not augur well for the possibility of any records of value being ever found in the two Iberian countries, that from them no reply whatever was received. That the Dutch searched for the Unknown Southland with great determination and considerable scientific acumen is amply evidenced by the instructions issued to the navigators who were specially sent from Java early in the seventeenth century. Further, although the subsequent discovery of Australia's west coast was due to what may be termed accident, their exploration of the Gulf of Carpentaria was carried out in so splendidly purposeful and informative a manner, that no doubt can be entertained as to the virtual certainty that, quite apart from accident, they would have ultimately succeeded in any case in making Australia known to the world. Nor is what is said to have been stated by Sir William Temple likely to be true that they forbade their mariners to make the knowledge of their discoveries public property. For in 1647 was published at Amsterdam, for all the world to buy, the circumstantial account of the voyage and wreck of the Batavia, giving complete geographical detail as to latitudes, nature of the land, etc.

Under these circumstances it can cause but little wonder that the first thoroughly reliable historian of the discovery of Australia is a Dutchman, Professor Dr. J. E. Heeres of Leiden. The inaccuracies committed by other writers, as regards facts, names, and inferences, would fill a large volume. It is strange that even compilers who had apparently seen Professor Heeres' book, The part borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia, should have committed such egregious errors, and reproduced, for instance, the utterly garbled spelling of Dutch names from carelessly printed publications. But in Heeres' book we have at last a compilation that bears the stamp of scientific investigation and conscientious deduction, and are consequently now on the terra firma of true historical knowledge. This I will at once prove more particularly as regards the treatment of perhaps the principal claim contained in the book, that of the evidence that the ship Duifken, in 1605, actually explored part of the shores washed by the Gulf of Carpentaria. On the 28th November 1605, the Duifken, commanded by Willem Jansz, put to sea from Bantam with New Guinea for destination. She returned to Banda before June. Unfortunately the log of her voyage has not come down to us, although referred to in official documents of 1618, so that the results achieved are only known indirectly from other records. But these records are sufficiently frequent and definite. In the instructions received by Tasman in 1644, the following passage occurs :

"The first voyage was undertaken in the year 1606 with the yacht Duyffken, by order of President Jan Willemsz Verschoor and the unknown south and west coasts of Nova Guinea were discovered over a length of 220 miles from 5 to 13 degrees southern latitude, it being only ascertained that vast regions were for the greater part uncultivated, and certain parts inhabited by savage, cruel, black barbarians, who slew some of our sailors, so that no information was obtained touching the exact situation of the country, and regarding the commodities obtainable and in demand there; our men were, through want of provisions and other necessaries, compelled to return and give up the discovery they had begun, only registering on their charts, with the name Cape Keerweer, the extreme point of the discovered land, in 134 degrees southern latitude."

It is evident that they had unconsciously entered the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it is incomprehensible to me how Mr. Collingridge can have looked for a Cape Keerweer in 134 degrees of southern latitude on the coast of New Guinea; the definiteness of the Duifken's record seems to have left no room for any reasonable doubt. This, one is glad to acknowledge, has apparently been recognised by the Government, which has perpetuated the name "Keerweer" weer" on the Queensland coast, and also named one cape "Duifhen Point," although with an unfortunate corruption of the "k" into an "h," which I trust will one of these days be corrected.

It must, of course, all the time be clearly borne in mind that the captain of the Duifken did not realise, any more than his countrymen for many years afterwards, that New Guinea was separated from Australia by the Torres Straits, through which its Spanish discoverer sailed, a few months after Willem Jansz had passed its western entrance while probably mistaking it for a gulf.

As conclusive as Tasman's instructions are the references in the log book of Jan Carstensz, the captain of the Pera in 1623, who extended the coastal explorations of the Duifken in the Gulf of Carpentaria. For instance :" We sailed past a large river (which the men of the Duifken went up with a boat in 1606, and where one of them was killed by "throws" of the blacks); to this river, which is in 11° 48′ lat., we have on the new chart given the name of 'revier de Carpentier." This river was subsequently re-baptized "Batavia," which name it still bears. And again, "In our landings between 13° and 11° we have but twice seen black men or savages, who received us much more hostilely than those more to the southward; they are also acquainted with muskets, of which they would seem to have experienced the fatal effect when in 1606 the men of the Duifken made a landing here."

In the absence of the Duifken's own log, I am not prepared to say