Abel Janszoon Tasman's Journal

In August 1642, two ships leave Batavia, the yacht Heemskerck and the flute Zeehaen, on a mission no one has yet accomplished: to find the unknown Southland.

In command is Abel Janszoon Tasman, a commander in the service of the East India Company, who records each day the wind, the course and the events on board. After a month's stopover at Mauritius, he plunges towards the high latitudes, into the fog, the cold and the storms that for a time separate the two ships. On 24 November a coast looms up: he names it after the governor-general, Antonio van Diemen. Smoke rises, trees bear notches, but no inhabitant shows himself, and it is a carpenter who swims ashore to plant the Prince's flag.

Further east rises a high land, where canoes draw near to the sound of trumpets. Further north, at the islands he names Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the welcome is quite different: bartering for pigs and coconuts, a visit from a king, music. Then come a night among the breakers, an earthquake felt on the open sea, the volcano of a burning island off New Guinea.

Spare, exact, punctuated by thanksgivings, this journal preserves the record of a ten-month loop around a continent Tasman would never see. What remains of a discovery when the man who makes it does not grasp its scale?