The Explorers Read Online Free PDF

long-tailed monkey; if it eats, it sits on its hindlegs, and clutches its food with its forepaws, just like a squirrel or monkey.
    Their manner of generation or procreation is exceedingly strange and highly worth observing. Below the belly the female carries a pouch, into which you may put your hand; inside the pouch are her nipples, and we have found that the young ones grow up in this pouch with the nipples in their mouths. We have seen some young ones lying there which were only the size of a bean, though at the same time perfectly proportioned, so that it seems certain that they grow there out of the nipples of the mammae, from which they draw their food, until they are grown up and are able to walk. Still, they keep creeping into the pouch even when they have become very large, and the dam runs off with them when they are hunted.
    In these two islands we also found a number of grey turtledoves, but no other animals. Nor is there any vegetation beyond brushwood, and little or no grass. This and what has hereinbefore been related is all that we have experienced and met with about these Abrolhos.

A BEL T ASMAN
    Men of Extraordinary Stature, 1642

    In 1642 Abel Tasman, wanderer on the sea from Batavia, sailed into a great blank on the world map. At latitude 42° S he sighted a mountainous island. Among the tall timbers, his men found a tree with notches cut at five-foot intervals. They heard the sounds of trumpets and small gongs, and saw the pawprints of an animal like a tiger. Tasman’s island is rather like the magical place Shakespeare dreamed up in The Tempest ,‘full of noises, sounds and sweet airs’, a land of preternatural imaginings and monstrous possibilities.
    Tasman left the island destined to bear his name convinced it was inhabited by giants and, to judge by the gongs and tigers, somewhat similar to Java. He was not to know that he had crossed the most profound zoological barrier on the planet—Wallace’s Line—the imaginary divide that separates the Australian region (with its eucalypts and kangaroos) from Asia (with its elephants and tigers). In Tasmania, men climbed trees by leaps and bounds, ascending from notch to notch with their toes and a stone hatchet. There, the currawong and bellbird called their melodious songs, and of course there were tigers—Tasmanian Tigers. We join Tasman near Storm Bay in the south-east of the island.
    24 November—Good weather and a clear sky…In the afternoon, about four o’clock, we saw land bearing east by north of us at about ten miles distance from us by estimation. The land we sighted was very high…
    25 November—This land being the first land we have met with in the South Sea, and not known to any European nation, we have conferred on it the name of Anthoony van Diemenslandt in honour of the Hon. Governor-General, our illustrious master, who sent us to make this discovery…
    2 December—Early in the morning we sent our pilot-major Francoys Jacobsz in command of our pinnace, manned with four musketeers and six rowers, all of them furnished with spikes and side-arms, together with the cockboat of the Zeehaen with one of her second mates and six musketeers in it, to a bay, situated north-west of us at upwards of a mile’s distance, in order to ascertain what facilities (as regards fresh water, refreshments, timber and the like) may be available there.
    About three hours before nightfall the boats came back, bringing various samples of vegetables which they had seen growing there in great abundance, some of them in appearance not unlike a certain plant growing at the Cabo de Bona Esperance and fit to be used as pot-herbs, and another species with long leaves and a brackish taste, strongly resembling persil de mer or samphire. The pilot-major and the second mate of the z eehaen made the following report, to wit:
    That they had rowed the space of upwards of a mile round the said point, where they had found high