How the men performed the feats they did,
wandering over vast and unknown oceans, visiting unknown coasts with
iron-bound shores, beset with sunken reefs, subsisting on food not fit
for human beings, suffering from scurvy caused by salted diet and
rotten biscuit, with a short allowance of water, in torrid zones, and
liable to be attacked and killed by hostile natives, it is difficult
for us to conceive. They suffered all the hardships it is possible to
imagine upon the sea, and for what? for fame, for glory? That their
names and achievements might be handed down to us; and this seems to
have been their only reward; for there was no Geographical Society's
medal in those days with its motto to spur them on.
Vlaming was the discoverer of the Swan River, upon which the seaport
town of Fremantle and the picturesque city of Perth, in Western
Australia, now stand. This river he discovered in 1697, and he was the
first who saw Dirk Hartog's tin plate.
Dampier's report of the regions he had visited caused him to be sent
out again in 1710 by the British Government, and upon his return, all
previous doubts, if any existed, as to the reality of the existence of
this continent, were dispelled, and the position of its western shores
was well established. Dampier discovered a beautiful flower of the pea
family known as the Clianthus Dampierii.
