In Tasman’s Track

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 951, 19 April 1930, Page 8

In Tasman’s Track

DUTCH SQUADRON COMING

WHEN Rear-Admiral C. C. Kayser comes with the Dutch East Indian Squadron to New Zealand at the end of this year, the Dominion’s public men will be groping in the pages of New Zealand history for knowledge of Abel Jansen Tasman, who is given the credit of having discovered this country. While Tasman is the official discoverer, there were probably other European voyagers who saw New Zealand before the Dutchman, and our public men should really not forget this.

The interesting thing about RearAdmiral Kayser’s voyage is that the route corresponds extremely well with that taken by Tasman with his vessels, the Heemskirk and the Zeehaan, in 1642. Kayser will sail from Sourabaya, the base in the huge Dutch East Indian island, Java; Tasman sailed from Batavia, Java, centuries ago under the orders of his patron, Anthonie Van Diemen, the Governor of Batavia. Java, too, was connected with New Zealand before Tasman’s voyage because it is named as a country occupied by the Maoris and their fellow-Polynesians on their journey from Asia to the Pacific. Admittedly, there are no definite records, but the belief of European discoveries of New Zealand before Tasman are .very real. In France, more than a century before Tasman set out, there were rumours and descriptions of a land in the South Seas. These accounts have been allied to the facts knowledge of New Zealand revealed. A book produced in Paris in 1643 bore this title: “Memoirs Relative to the Establishment of a Christian Mission in the Third World, otherwise called the South Land, by an ecclesiastic, a descendant of the natives.” It is recorded that the French explorer, De Gonneville, reached a land called Southern India in 1504. Some of the observations made on that voyage are applicable to New Zealand. Juan Fernandez sailed south-west from South America in 1576 and found “brown men wearing cloth garments on a fertile short of the Pacific.” FOUND BY PORTUGUESE? An Admiralty chart of 1827 says Tasman discovered New Zealand but the coast was known to the Portuguese in 1550. Cook Strait, called the Sea of Raukawa by the Maoris, was shown as the Gulf of the Portuguese. * De Gonneville found a race employing “s” in its language and using bows and arrows. There is no “s” in Maori, although the Ngapuhi early last century still employed an “sh” sound for “h,” and there is a possibility that early stocks of New Zealand spoke a language widely different from Maoris. The Maoris did not use .bows and arrows—distinctly Melanesian weapons—but they had words for them. Bows and arrows, relics of a former people, have been found in New Zealand. Before Tas-

man’s voyage, the Dutch had a map revealing an indefinite coastline called Zealandia Nova Tasman called New Zealand Staten Land, in honour of the Dutch State, but, on his return, was instructed to call the land Nova Zealandia, after Zeeland, a province of the Netherlands Tasman’s record, extremely incomplete in comparison with the studious and careful observations of Captain James Cook and his scientists more than a century later, begins: “Journal of a description by me, Abel Jansz Tasman, of a voyage from Batavia for making discoveries of the unknown South Land, in the year 1642 May God Almighty be pleased to give His blessing to this book. Amen.” • . “STRONG, ROUGH VOICES” Tasman’s memories of New Zealand were not wholly favourable though he noted that the country was large and rich. The Maoris slaughtered a boat’s crew at Massacre Bay, a place called Moordenars’ (Murderers’) Bay by the discoverer. Tasman described the colour of the savages, who paddled out to the Heemskirk and the Zeehaan in long “praws” (a reference to the Malay vessels, proas), as between brown and yellow. Their hair was piled on the tops of their heads In Japanese fashion, but was adorned with feathers. The Maoris, Tasman wrote, called out with “strong, rough voices” and sounded instruments like Moorish trumpets. The Three Kings Islands, called Drie Konlngen Eyland by the Dutch, were named after a mediaeval festival, and another memory of Tasman is in Cape Maria Van Diemen, a name applied in honour of Anthonie Van Diemen’s daughter. Tasman's was a hurried visit, and, it is feared, he did not approve of the first New Zealanders. Certainly, the Dutch paid little attention to the land. Little was heard of New Zealand in the following years, but Cook’s live visits in his three voyages into the Pacific, were accompanied by a flood of French voyagers who named portions of the coast, whalers of England and America, missionaries and colonists. It will be interesting to know how New Zealand’s public men will associate Tasman’s venture with the arrival of a modern Dutch expedition, this time without hazards, unless they lie in a knowledge of history.