Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/131

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INTRODUCTION.
ciii

lish officials, in concert with some Japanese soldiers, had formed a conspiracy to kill the Dutch in the island and to gain possession of the fortress. The conspiracy was discovered, and the governor had the conspirators put to death. In England the governor's conduct was regarded as a piece of heartless cruelty. Mutual recriminations ensued, and for several years a contest between the two countries was imminent. After Carpenter's return to Holland in 1628, he was sent out as one of a deputation to London on this subject despatched in the year 1629. He was also appointed president of the Company of the Indies in Amsterdam, which post he occupied till his death in 1659. It need, therefore, no longer be subject of surprise that Tasman should have given the name of Carpenter, the president of the Home Company of the Indies, to an extensive country and gulf discovered by him in 1644.

We cannot dismiss our notice of this important voyage, which thus gave the name of New Holland to the great South Land, without quoting the remark of Thevenot in the Relation de l'estat présent des Indes, prefixed to the second volume of his Relation de Divers Voyages Curieux. He says: "The Dutch pretend to have a right to the southern land which they have discovered... They maintain that these coasts were never known by the Portuguese or the other nations of Europe..... It is to be noticed that all this extent of country falls within the line of demarcation of the Dutch East India Company, if we are to believe their maps, and that