who, when cruising off Edel's Land, discovered, upon the 3rd of January 1697, the mouth of a stream much frequented by black swans, and an adjacent island that swarmed with kangaroo rats. Vlaming bestowed upon the island the appropriate name of Rottnest, or the "rat's nest," and christened the stream the Black Swan River, but the river has long since moulted the first portion of the adjective, and the birds that once haunted its waters have also much withdrawn themselves from observation.
Proceeding northwards, and coasting along Endracht's Land, Vlaming landed upon an island called after Dirk Hartog, at the entrance of Shark's Bay, and had the good hap to find a written memorial which Dirk Hartog himself had left there eighty-one years previously. A pewter plate nailed to a tree bore an inscription to the effect that the ship 'Endracht,' of Amsterdam, had arrived at that island on the 25th of October, 1616: Captain Dirk Hartog: and that she had sailed two days afterwards for Bantam. Vlaming replaced the pewter document after appending a second inscription, recording his own arrival at that spot in the ship 'Geelvint,' on the 4th of February, 1697, and he is also said to have deposited similar memorials of his progress along the coast at different places on the mainland; but unfortunately none of them have ever yet come to light.
By the early part of the eighteenth century Dutch curiosity seems to have been lulled concerning New Holland, (as the States-General had decreed in 1665 that their discoveries in Australia should be henceforth collectively called,) or satisfied that it offered little to reward further investigation. No Dutch settlement crowned the
