Schouten’S Pearls.

A Mystery of the Early Pacific.

HIDDEN away in an obscure corner of the vividly colourful pageant of the Pacific’s romantic his tory is the story of the remarkable voyage early in the 17th century of Jacob le Maire and Corneliuszoon Schouten.

These two Dutch navigators sailed from the Texel, in two small ships, with the intention of circumventing the all powerful Dutch East India Company’s absolute monopoly of all the trade west of Cape Horn. Their idea was that if they could make their way into the Pacific by a route other than that around the Horn, they would be able to trade with the rich lands in the Southern Ocean in defiance of the com pany’s charter.

They found the way which they sought by going through the Straits of Magellan and, after losing one of their vessels by fire while she was being careened, eventually arrived off New Guinea. They anchored somewhere about Geelvink Bay; but the real in terest of their story lies in the fact that after their arrival there they went somewhere else for several months.

Then Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the youthful Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, learned of their presence in for bidden waters and sent a vessel to arrest them.

Where they were during the blank space, is still a geographical mystery.

Some believe that they crossed over to what is now New Britain and, landing in Gazelle Bay, went inland, in the savage district known as the Bainings, in search of gold.

Others believe that from Geelvink Bay they went to Torres Straits and there discovered a fabulously rich pearl bed, the locality of which, it is asserted, was in the vicinity of Horn Island, and which has never been re-discovered.

Coen sent both of them to Holland as prisoners, after confiscating their ship, and le Maire died on the voyage, it is said, of disappointment.

Schouten, however, was made of hardier stuff and lived to publish the journal of the voyage, since re-pub lished in an excellently-annotated edi tion by the Hakluyt Society of London.

He also left a smaller journal, less widely known, in which he makes several guarded references to a find of great value; and it is known that when he returned to Holland he took back with him a quantity of pearls of re markable quality and lustre. These he presented to his niece, Maria Schouten, whose only portrait shows her wearing the pearls! in the form of a string.

Linda Burkitt.