New Holland (Australia)

New Holland is a historic name for the island continent of Australia. The name was first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman as Nova Hollandia, naming it after the Dutch province of Holland, and remained in use for 180 years.

History

William Dampier's account of exploring the region used the name in his account.Dampier, William,(1981) A voyage to New Holland : the English voyage of discovery to the South Seas in 1699 edited with an introduction by James Spencer. Gloucester : Alan Sutton. ISBN 0904387755 The American author Edgar Allan Poe also referred to New Holland as late as 1833, in his prize-winning short story "MS. Found in a Bottle": "the hulk flew at a rate defying computation (...) and we must have run down the coast of New Holland".

Furthermore, in 1854, Henry David Thoreau - an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist - mentioned the term New Holland (referring to the territory of the "wild" indigenous Australians) in his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods, in which he writes: "So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man?"(page...
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