HISTORIC RECORD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26472, 28 May 1947, Page 5

HISTORIC RECORD

ABEL TASMAN'S. LOG FIRST MENTION OF DOMINION INTERESTING CONCLUSIONS DRAWN From E. G. Webber, Special Correspondent THE HAGUE, May 26. Among the hundreds of thousands of documents which line the 24 miles of shelves and passageways in the Archives Department of the Netherlands Government at The Hague is one slim, vellum-bound book which contains the first recorded mention of New Zealand. It is the original log and journal kept by Abel Janszoon Tasman on the Heemskirk during his famous two-year voyage, in which he ’ sailed from Batavia to Mauritius, and thence along the southern coast of Australia and Tasmania, to cross the sea which now bears bis name, and discovered New Zealand. He thought the land he had discovered was part of thfe great unknown continent of Terra Austraus Incognita, then believed to lie south of Australia, and called it Staatenland, in honour of the Dutch State General.

Exemplary Neatness

The log is in an excellent state of preservation. The only inscription on the outer cover is indecipherable, but between the covers the writing is meticulously neat in brown ink hardly faded. The untidiest part of it is the heavy, laborious signature of Tasman himseif, contrasting with the ornamental whirls and flourishes of the ship’s writer, who apparently wrote the text under the instructions of his captain. The margin of each page is carefully ruled, but no emphasis is placed upon any of the Entries, and there is no indication from the manner in which he recorded his observations that Tasman knew he was writing hisThe first mention of the new land he discovered south of Australia is made with exemplary brevity: bub; heading—” Item 13, December 16, 1642, in the words, “Towards noon we saw a large, high-lying land bearing southeast of us at about 15 miles. Only i subsequent entries, during which he describes the Maoris’ attack upon the cockboat of his second vessel, the Zeahen, in what he was pleased to call Murderers’ Bay, does Tasman, permit himself to depart noticeably ham the formal phraseology in which he recorded his vojtegings for his masters, the Dutch East Indies Company.

Maoris Found Unfriendly He several times the Maoris’ behaviour as “detestable, and adds: “Henceforward this must teach us to regard the inhabitants of this land as fnemies.” He did however, record for posterity the grudging verdict: “This land seems to be a very fil The°Hague archivist also possesses the English translation and explanation of Tasman’s journal made under the direction of the noted Dutch historical research- authority, Professor J. E. Heeres, of the Netherlands Colonial Institute at Delft. All the charts, maps, diagrams, and sketches with which Tasman illustrated his journal are as clear to-day as when they were drawn 300 years ago. He pictures the Maoris in Murderers’ Bay with their hair tied in topknots, and likens them-in this to the Japanese, with whom he was familiar in his .earlier voyagings to Formosa.

Little Honoured by Countrymen

Unlike his British successor, Captain James Cook, Tasman appears to have received little recognition in his own country. The only known memorial to him in Holland is a tablet in the church of his native village of Lutjegast, in the province of Groningen, and trie Abel Tasman School for the training of merchant seamen at Delfzyl, on the Groningen coast. Although the Tasman journal has been frequently translated into English and its maps and sketches reproduced, there are no recent records in the register of The Hague achieves to show that the original journal had been inspected previously by any New Zealand visitor. The best-known facsimile copy is in the British Museum.