ADVENTURES IN SOUTHERN SEAS
or A Tale of the Sixteenth Century
by George Forbes
A fictionalized and illustrated account of the voyages of Dirk Hartog, Dutch navigator of the Sixteenth Century. "In the year 1801 was found by the chief coxswain of the Naturalist (a ship commanded by Captain Hamelin on a voyage of discovery performed by order of the Emperor Napoleon I) at Shark's Bay, on the coast of West Australia, a pewter plate of about six inches in diameter, bearing a roughly-engraved Dutch inscription which commemorated the landing in 1616 of Hartog on this coast." This fictionalized account has everything; giant sea spiders (squid), hopping creatures (kangaroos), etc., and it is interesting to read the melodramatic accounts of these sixteenth century sailors of what we now know to be quite ordinary creatures, well known to every schoolboy. It is even more interesting to compare these accounts with the accounts of the sailors in The Boats of the Glen Carrig . Those creatures have not been explained. . . but someday, . . . who knows? First published in 1920. Illustrated with four black and white paintings.