Many of the Dutch also felt a similar regret, and would have been well pleased to have made a longer stay in this delightful and plenteous country, among so kind a people, as, by the help of the excellent provisions in great abundance with which these good islands furnished them, all their sick people would have been perfectly recovered in a month.  These islands had also one convenience greatly superior to those they had met with before, as there was good anchorage almost every where along their coasts, where they rode in the utmost safety, in from fifteen to twenty fathoms.

So many advantageous circumstances ought to have induced Roggewein and his officers to have remained here longer; but their heads were so full of proceeding for the East Indies, that they were fearful of missing the favourable monsoon, while they afterwards discovered, to their cost, that they were two months too early, instead of two months too late.  By this indiscreet step, they sacrificed the health and strength of their crew to such a degree, that they were at length hardly able to navigate their ships, and at one time were on the point of burning one of their ships, that they might be better able to manage the other:  All of which inconveniences might have been avoided, had they embraced this opportunity afforded them by Divine Providence, and been contented to remain in a place of safety, plenty, and pleasure, till their sick were recovered, instead of wilfully seeking new dangers which they were so little able to encounter.

Leaving Bowman’s islands, and continuing their course towards the N.W. they came next morning in sight of two islands, which they took to be Coccos and Traitor’s islands,[7] so called by Schouten, who discovered them.  The island of Coccos, at a distance, for Roggewein would not stop to examine it, seemed very high land, and about eight leagues in circuit.  The other seemed much lower, composed of a red soil, and destitute of trees.  They soon after saw two other islands of large extent, one of which they named Tienhoven,[8] and the other Groninguen; which last many of their officers were of opinion was no island, but the great southern continent they were sent out to discover.  The island of Tienhoven appeared a rich and beautiful country, moderately high, its meadows or low lands, by the sea, exceedingly green, and the interior well provided with trees.  They coasted along this island for a whole day without reaching its extremity, yet noticed that it extended semi-circularly towards the island of Groninguen, so that those which they took for islands might be contiguous lands, and both of them parts of the Terra Australis incognita.

[Footnote 7:  There must be here an enormous error in the text; Coccos and Traitor’s islands are almost directly west from Recreation island, and the northermost of the Society islands, supposed to be the Bowman’s islands of the text, and not less than 23 deg.10’ farther west than these last, or 463 marine leagues, which could not well be run in less than a week or ten days.—­E.]