Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1887 — Australia. [ARTICLE]

Australia.

Australia first became known to Europeans in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Though a vague outline of land in this portion of the Southern Ocean appears upon the map of some Portuguese navigators dated 1542, the first real discovery was probably made by the Lutch in 16 -6, when the captain of the yacht Duyfken, sent out horn Bantam to explore a part ot the coast of New Guina, saw the northern shoi e of the continent at a distant e. The same year Torres Strait was named from a Portuguese navigator who sailed through it. In 1616 Hartog, a Dutch captain, came upon the west coast of Australia and called it Endrachts land, from the name of his ship. From this time other parts of the wert coast were discovered. In 1622 the - eeuw.u discovered the south coast at Cape Leeuwin, and shortly after Aan Nuysts sailed from that cape on the south coast to bpencer’s Gulf. DeWitt’s Land and Carpentaria, in North Australia, were also d scovered by utch traders. Captain Cook, iu 1770, discove ed Few South Wales’and . otuny Bay, which was so called by Sir Joseph Banks, the botan'st of the expedition, from the wonderful floral display which its plains afforded. In 1788 the first English (olonywas established in New South Wales, at first as a penal settlement.