Chapter XX: Appendix

De Gonneville left Honfleur in the month of June of the year 1503, in the good ship _L’Espoir_; and after having rounded the Cape of Good Hope he was assailed by tempestuous weather and driven into calmer latitudes. A tedious spell of calms forced him, for want of water, to make for the first land he could sight. The flight of some birds coming from the south decided him to run a course to the southward, and after a few days’ sail he landed on the coast of a large territory, at the mouth of a fine river which he compared to the river Orne at Caen. There he remained six months, repairing his vessel, holding meanwhile amicable relations with the natives. He left the great Austral land, to which he gave the name of “Southern Indies”, on the 3rd July, 1504, taking with him two of the natives, one of these being the son of the chief of the tribe amongst whom he had resided. On the return voyage no land was seen until the day after the Feast of St. Denis, on the 10th of October of the same year; but, on nearing the coast of France the ship was attacked, off the islands of Guernsey and Jersey, by an English privateer, who robbed the navigators of all they had brought with them from the land they had visited: the most important loss being the journal of the expedition. On their arrival at Honfleur De Gonneville immediately entered a plaint before the Admiralty Court of Normandy, and wrote a report of his voyage which was signed by the principal officers of the vessel.

The following is a translation of the title of this document:--

“_Judicial declaration made before the Admiralty Court of Normandy by Sieur de Gonneville, at the request of the King’s Procurator, respecting the voyage of the good ship ‘L’Espoir’, of the port of Honfleur, to the Southern Indies._”

The account of the erection of the great Cross runs thus:--

“Intending to leave some memorial that this country had been visited by Christians, they erected a large wooden cross, thirty-five feet high, and painted over, placed on an eminence in view of the sea. This they did with much ceremony on the day of Pentecost, 1504; the Cross being carried by the captain and his officers, all barefooted, accompanied by the King Arosca and the principal Indians. After them followed the crew under arms, and singing the Litany. They were accompanied by a crowd of Indians, to whom they gave to understand the meaning of the ceremony as well as they could. Having set up the Cross, they fired volleys of their cannon and small arms, charging the Indians to keep carefully and honour the monument they had set up.

“Having refitted the ship, and being willing, after the manner of those who discover strange countries, to bring some of the natives back with them, they persuaded the King Arosca to let them have one of his sons, promising the father that they would bring him back in twenty moons, with others who should teach them the use of firearms, and how to make mirrors, axes, knives, and other things they used amongst Christians.”

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Being unable to keep his word as to the return of Prince Essomeric, the tradition goes that De Gonneville settled some of his property on him, gave him his name, and married him to a relative, as some compensation. What the relative thought of it does not appear. The grandson of Essomeric by this marriage is said to have been a priest, and, under the name of J. B. Paulmier, was canon of the Cathedral Church of St. Pierre de Lizieux.

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The fact of the carven stone head is thus told by Sir George Grey, who discovered it in the north-west, about that part of the coast where De Gonneville was supposed to have landed:--

“I was moving on when we observed the profile of a human face and head cut out in a sandstone rock which fronted the cave. This rock was so hard that to have removed such a large portion of it with no better tools than a knife and hatchet made of stone, such as the Australian natives generally possess, would have been a work of great labour. The whole of the work was good, and far superior to what a savage race could be supposed capable of executing. The only proof of antiquity that it bore about it was that all the edges of the cutting were rounded, and perfectly smooth--much more so than they could have been from any other cause than long exposure to atmospheric influences.”

The two graves in which I have buried Zolca and Azolta were also discovered by Sir George Grey, and thus described by him:--

“_April 6._ We halted a few hundred yards from two remarkable heaps of stones of the same kind as those I have before mentioned.

“_April 7._ This morning I started off before dawn, and opened the most southern of the two mounds of stone, which presented the following curious facts. 1st. They were both placed due east and west with great regularity. 2nd. They were both exactly of the same length, but different in breadth and height. 3rd. They were not formed altogether of small stones from the place on which they stood, but many were portions of very distant rocks, which must have been brought by human hands. My own opinion concerning these heaps of stones had been that they were tombs: and this opinion remains unaltered, though we found no bones in the mound, only a great deal of fine mould, having a damp, dank smell. The antiquity of the one we opened appeared to be very great--I should say two or three hundred years.”

Whether these strange discoveries of Grey’s, including the well-known cave paintings, point to the existence once of a colony of semi-civilized people cannot well be determined. The non-existence of ruins of any sort can easily be accounted for by the fact that they built their houses of mud which, after being abandoned to the mercy of successive tropical wet seasons, would soon disappear. The work found differs so entirely from the ordinary rude memorials of the aborigines that there is room for speculation on the subject.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] On his second voyage of discovery Tasman was instructed to call at the Abrolhos, and endeavour to find the two men left by Pelsart; to learn from them all they had found out about the country, and if they desired it, to give them a passage to Java. The record of this second voyage of Tasman’s has, however, been either lost or destroyed.

[B] The hurricanes that break on the north-west coast of Australia equal in fury the typhoons of the northern tropic. Vessels belonging to the pearling fleet have been carried far into the mangroves and left high and dry. They are locally known as “willy-willys”.