De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 1994

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David Fausett
Smeeks and the Nijptangh Journal: a Reappraisal

Hendrik Smeeks's utopian novel Krinke Kesmes (1708)^1. has long engendered speculation, and even wild hypotheses, about its sources. Like many such works it claims to be a true story of travel to the ‘unknown Southland’, and was a step along the way towards literary realism: a form of novel that played a central role in intellectual developments in its time. Both in this and in a more directly ideological way (as a utopia, or dystopia) it reflects those trends, and the role that overseas trade and culture-contact played in them. And yet an adequate enquiry into its possible sources in maritime literature has been made only once, in 1910, and can now be further advanced.

The hero of the story sets out to trade in the East, but ends up in the Southland and discovers a utopian society. He meets a former Dutchman who had been cast away there as a boy, and become naturalized. This ‘free man’, El-ho, recounts his own arrival in an inner story which is so realistic that it has been seen as a possible source for Robinson Crusoe. He had been a cabin-boy on the Waeckende Boey (Watching Buoy), a ship sent to rescue survivors from the Dutch East India Company's Vergulde Draeck (Golden Dragon) after she was wrecked on the west coast of Australia in 1656.

These were real events; and Smeeks backed up his story by saying, in a handwritten addition to his own copy of the book, that they were also mentioned in the published memoirs of a Dr. Schouten, who was in the East Indies when they occurred. The story does have a plausible basis in those events (though not as related by Schouten); indeed, it has stronger such links than any other early imaginary voyage, and for that reason is of major significance in its genre and period.^2.

The possibility that a true story underlay Smeeks's novel and, in turn, Robinson Crusoe was raised by Hettner (1862), Ullrich (1898), Ten Brink

1. Beschryvinge van het magtig Koningryk Krinke Kesmes (Amsterdam: N. ten Hoorn, 1708). The Dutch text is reproduced, with a valuable introduction, by P.J. Buijnsters (Zutphen, 1976) and an English edition introduced by myself is forthcoming: The Mighty Kingdom of Krinke Kesmes, trans. R. Leek (Amsterdam, 1994). Passages cited here are from the latter edition.

2. See D. Fausett, Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages and Utopias of the Great Southen Land (Syracuse, 1993), chaps. 7, 10; and D. Fausett, The Strange Surprizing Sources of Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam, 1994), chaps. 6, 9.

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(1901), Staverman (1907), Hoogewerff (1909), and later by others. In 1910 S.P. l'Honoré Naber noted possible maritime sources for it; among them, an anonymous journal from Willem de Vlamingh's expedition to the coast in question in 1696-1697.^3. It was published in 1701, appended to translations of earlier French ‘austral’ utopias by Vairasse and Foigny - thereby putting into question both the fictional status of the latter and the factual status of the journal.^4. Naber compared elements appearing in both the El-ho's story and the journal (water-holes, a tin plate, a river, and black swans), and concluded that Smeeks had used the latter in conjunction with a literary tradition, in much the same way that Defoe would use Selkirk's stranding; indeed, that the hybrid 1701 work should be counted among the forerunners of Robinson Crusoe. I have now found evidence (see n. 2) that Defoe probably owned a copy of it.

This vital point went largely unnoticed, however. Naber did not pursue its significance in literary terms, but went on to speculate that the El-ho was a real person on either De Vlamingh's expedition or that of the Waeckende Boey in 1658. The latter theory was based (erroneously) on Schouten's book; while the former was anachronistic, but was taken to such lengths by another critic, Hubbard, that it brought the whole subject into disrepute.^5. The notion of a ‘Dutch Robinson’ was debunked, and lapsed into obscurity. Its last gasp was when, in 1930, Hoogewerff reiterated the realism of the Elho story and speculated that the latter may have been Smeeks himself; a theory plausible on chronological grounds, and reflecting the little that was (and still is) known about the author.

In rehabilitating Krinke Kesmes, P.J. Buijnsters recently discussed the work's composition and mentioned the 1701 work^6., noting (p. 54) Naber's

3. S.P. l'Honoré Naber, ‘Nog eens de nederlandsche bron van den Robinson Crusoe’, Onze Eeuw 10, pt. 1 (Haarlem: Bohn) 435-440.

4. Historie der Sevarambes, volkeren die een gedeelte van het derde vastland bewoonen, gemeenlijke Zuidland genaamd. In dezen tweeden druk vermeerdert met een nieuwe reize na het gemelde land mitsgaders een ... journaal wegens de voyage derwaarts gedaan in de jaren 1696 en 1697 op order der Hollandsche Oostindische Maatschapij [The History of the Sevarambes, a people who inhabit part of the third continent, commonly called the Southland. Augmented in this second edition with a new voyage to the said land, together with a ... journal account of the voyage made there in the years 1696 and 1697 by order of the Dutch East India Company] (Amsterdam, 1701). See further notes 8, 11. The ‘new voyage’ mentioned is a Dutch translation of the abridged 1692 version of Foigny's novel Les aventures de Jacques Sadeur.

5. L.L. Hubbard, A Dutch Sourcefor Robinson Crusoe: The Narrative of the El-Ho ‘Sjouke Gabbes’ ... (Ann Arbor, 1921). Naber identified Gabbes as a youth in the crew of the Nijptangh (Pincers), who died during De Vlamingh's expedition; this being the same ship from which the published journal came.

6. Buinsters (n. 1), Beschryvinge, 25-28. Buijnsters also clarified the identity of Smeeks and enabled theories such as that just mentioned, of Hoogewerff, to be put into perspective.

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discovery that ‘use had been made’ of it. The present article pursues this question; for although Smeeks used sources ranging widely across the literary and historical realms, the basic ingredients he needed were all present in the 1701 work. The latter's role in the composition of Krinke Kesmes may have a considerable bearing on that work's place in the wider literary scheme of its time. Such a study shows that the 1701 work was indeed the basic source, only topically modified by Smeeks's broadly eclectic interests.^7.

The El-ho's story begins, as noted, with the visit of the Waeckende Boey to New Holland. On arrival they fired shots and searched in vain for castaways, then sailed along the coast firing cannon and making further searches ashore; but saw no people, only footprints and other signs. Three days later they were at the wreck-site. A sloop was provisioned for some days and sent on a mission, from which it did not return; and a party of twelve went ashore, including the El-ho. But he was more interested in finding ‘refreshments’ than searching for castaways, and after three hours he got lost in the bush. This resembles journal accounts of that visit, and of a similar one two years earlier by the Goede Hoop (Good Hope); suggesting that Smeeks may have used either or both of these sources (which remained unpublished until the nineteenth century).

But the story then aligns itself on the Nijptangh journal as found in the 1701 edition, whose author has been identified as the ship's upper surgeon, Mandrop Torst.^8. The only other surviving journal from De Vlamingh's expedition is his own, as skipper of the Geelvinck (Yellow Finch); but it too remained unpublished until 1867 (when a copy of it, signed by him, was included in P.A. Leupe's history of Dutch navigations). This alone would strongly suggest that Smeeks's source was Torst. Significantly, too, he was a man ‘less concerned with details of navigation than with extensive descrip-

7. Two examples of which I would mention, however, as they may solve two of Smeeks's curious anagrams and reflect his use of exotic data in articulating complex ideas. Firstly, the Garbon (Supervisor or ‘grand vizier’) of Krinke Kesmes seems to signify the barong-mask of Balinese theatre, with its bulging eyes and voyeuristic manner. An element of masquerade indeed pervades the work, as themes, people, and events are doubled up and cross over between fact and fiction. Again, the hero of the main (outer) story is Juan de Posos: a Dutchman masquerading as a Spaniard. He had assumed his ‘suppositious’ new identity by taking the name - the mask - of a Spaniard he knew who lived in a remote village. His name may, furthermore, be an anagram for the English word ‘supposed’, possibly alluding to Defoe. On literary exchanges at the time between Britain and the Netherlands, see Fausett (n. 1), Mighty Kingdom.

8. By G. Schilder, in Voyage to the Great South Land. Willem de Vlamingh, 1696-7 (Sydney, 1985). Schilder's translation of the journal (ibid., 146-162) is cited here, in parenthetic references not otherwise attributed.

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tions of the land, which complement Geelvinck's entries. Torst repeatedly accompanied the landing parties, and we are indebted to him for detailed accounts which are either completely absent from Geelvinck's journal or are mentioned but briefly. De Vlamingh was largely dependent on others' reports for his entries, whereas Torst writes like a keenly interested eyewitness.’^9.

In fact (as Naber noted), Smeeks himself signals his use of this source in chapter 3 of Krinke Kesmes, when a character called the Master criticizes De Vlamingh for frightening away the Southlanders with firearms, thereby causing the expedition to fail in its mission to gather information about them: ‘Now as for de Vlaamink, I myself have spoken to people who went thither with him. Who told me things that I do not find reported in the published Journal; to wit, that when that stout Seafarer landed on the Southland coast ... he was so overjoyed, that he, to demonstrate his delight, fired off his artillery, shot off rockets and had fireworks ignited. Which terrified the Southlanders so much, that they did not get to see or speak to a single person.’ This was true, but probably only because one of De Vlamingh's tasks was to again search for survivors from the Vergulde Draeck, and the commotion was a signal for that purpose. Yet it suggests, not only that Smeeks used Torst's journal, but that he may have spoken to sailors among De Vlamingh's crews - the sort of people who might form such a misapprehension of the latter's actions.

Torst reports (p. 153) that ‘having gone some distance into the interior of the island [Rottnest, off the mouth of the Swan River] I found there a great variety of herbs of which a great many were not unknown to me.’ The El-ho similarly tells that ‘After stepping ashore, we went landinward, at a guess at least a three hour's walk, when we reached a Wood. Here I had no other thought than to look for refreshment or some fruit.’ It is true that Torst saw ‘no animals except a kind of rat as large as a common cat’ (p. 154), whereas the El-ho asserts that there was ‘neither Man nor Beast’; but Torst had earlier asserted, in a similar description of an Indian Ocean island (p. 151), that it was devoid of animal life.

On realizing he is lost, the El-ho is comforted to find that he has some string and hooks, ‘which a Sailor had given me to look after, so that I, if I stayed on the beach, could join in the fishing.’ Torst also mentions fish (pp. 154, 157) and fishing (pp. 156, 159); and later in his visit, near Dirk Hartog Island, the fishing was good and three sharks were caught, one of which

9. Ibid., 74-75. Cf. also 78 (appendices), a source for the medical themes emphasized by Smeeks, who was a surgeon by trade: the journals of the surgeons on the Geelvinck and Nijptangh, ‘a treasure of detailed information about the various illnesses that manifested themselves on the voyage and the treatments applied.’

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contained thirteen young. The El-ho too describes (also later in his story) how he ‘had found three large hooks on chains, used to catch Sharks; to go fishing with this in the lagoon for a diversion, I tied a sturdy stake to my line as a float, along with a good rod; casting the hook with a chunk of meat, I got such a strong bite straightaway, that my float went down like lead; I paid out my line, and having rowed gently to the shore, where I moored the Sloop, I gently pulled it in, and sighted the float, which was dragged down again, when I paid out my line once more; this went on for almost four hours: I pulled in, and paid out again, until the fish, being tired, let itself be led to the beach ... I saw a large head emerging, which was quite monstrous, it opened up such a tremendous maw, that I for terror ran to my hut.’ Eventually, he ‘had a close look at it. It was flat, and at least as large as a very large table, looked quite like a Ray.’ This repeats almost verbatim Torst's mention that, following their shark fishing, he caught ‘a fish of immense size of which we 24 ate, it tasting quite precisely like ray, and there was enough left to feed another 30 men.’ (p. 159)

The El-ho ‘thought of drinking’ the lagoon water, but ‘found it to be somewhat brackish. A little away from there I dug a hole with my hands, which filled up with fresh water; I drank, and was refreshed.’ Torst records that on Rottnest ‘we found several basins with exceedingly salt water ... and about six to seven paces from there having dug a hole, fresh water welled up fit to drink.’ (p. 154, with further such details on pp. 154 and 158). The El-ho goes on to mention that ‘the water in the pond was turbid, brown and reddish, like the water of a fen, or when there are rotting leaves in it’; and Torst too adds, a few paragraphs later, that ‘having rowed to the [Swan] river bank in the boat we found ... a little pool of fresh water and in it, on the bottom, a certain herb smelling like thyme, possibly placed there by the South Landers to add an agreeable taste to the water and remove its brackishness.’

In a forest, the El-ho ‘saw a very thick tall tree, which was recognizable on account of its thickness;’ and Torst noted that the country around the Swan River was ‘wooded with many trees, among which some as much as three to four fathoms [7 meters] thick’ (p. 156). The El-ho found ‘apples’, ‘and various Fruit trees showed up, which I did not know, but from which I ate in God's name; they agreed well with me.’ This seems to invert Torst's experience when he was ‘offered the kernel of a certain fruit not unlike the Drioens [durians] in appearance, and tasting like our Dutch broad beans and those which were less ripe, like a hazelnut. I ate five or six and drank some of the water from the aforesaid holes, but after an interval of about three hours I and five more of the others who had also eaten of the said fruit began to vomit so violently that there was hardly any distinction between death and us’ (p. 155).

The El-ho goes on to mention that he followed a river to a lagoon where he ‘caught a fine perch, and ... another five or six perch, which I cleaned

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and roasted on wooden spits.’ The Torst passage just quoted is also followed by a trip up the Swan River, where there was ‘an abundance of fish floundering in the water.’ The El-ho also mentions, further on, that he caught several perch in a salty lagoon; all of which appears to echo the multiple occurrence of both elements - fish and salty lagoons - in Torst's journal.

The El-ho, having eaten and drunk well, went looking for the ship and, on the way, ‘thought I saw footsteps, but these disappeared again.’ A similar discovery is reported several times by Torst. On first exploring the mainland, he and his companions found rude huts and ‘a river on whose banks we saw several footprints ... Further on we found still more poor huts and footprints.’^10. The same was reported the next day (p. 155), and then up the Swan River ‘we saw several footprints and the imprint of a hand in the sand, where the marks of the thumb and the fingers proved sufficiently that they had not been there long [since].’ Some days later, on the barren coast further north, they ‘were inland about a mile and a half, but found no people, nor fresh water, but several human footprints and such as of a dog and a cassowary’ (p. 156). Further north still, scouts reported finding ‘fresh water as well as a hut and footprints eighteen inches long, about an hour's march from our camp’; though on investigation, ‘those eighteen-inch footprints changed into ordinary ones’ (p. 158).

Landing in another barren place, they ‘did not find any fresh water anywhere, although round about they saw several human footprints’ (p. 160). Just prior to this, moreover, Torst notes that they ‘climbed up a mountain, saw a valley and a bit further a body of water.’ The El-ho's finding of footprints is similarly preceded by the mention that he ‘climbed the Mountain, from whose top I could see the Sea, at a guess an ample hour's walk away.’ Although he adds, ‘that Mountain was only a high hill, standing by itself in level country,’ this does not contradict Torst's having seen a valley, since the El-ho's route to the mountain had just been through a river valley containing fruit trees and so on, as mentioned.

Next we come to another motif central to the stories of both the El-ho and Robinson Crusoe, and unquestionably derived from Torst's journal. ‘Arriving on top of a Dune,’ says the El-ho, ‘I saw an erected Stake, to which a Tin plate had been nailed, on which was written the name of the Skipper and the Ship, with which I had come.’ This refers to the famous pewter plate that Dirk Hartog erected in 1616 on the island named after him, and which Torst's companions found thus: ‘The 3rd [February] de Vlamingh's upper-steersman came back on board and reported that he had covered eighteen miles and that it was an island. He brought with him a

10. On p. 154. These were not the first such reports; see Fausett (n. 2), Writing the New World, chap. 7 (esp. n. 16), on the Waeckende Boey visit.

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pewter plate which in the passage of time had fallen on the ground from a post to which it had been fixed and on which was inscribed the skipper's name, Dirk Hatich, as also the names of the merchant, under-merchant, and upper-steersman of the ship d'Eendragt having come here in the year 1616 on the 25th of October, and departed for Bantam on the 27th of the same month’ (p. 159).

The plate in the El-ho story has the name of his skipper and ship; these are not named, but would have been Samuel Volkersen and the Waeckende Boey. Volkersen did not, however, call at Dirk Hartog Island. Smeeks thus seems to have adapted a motif (later taken up by Defoe), for which there was no other published source than Torst's journal in the 1701 work.

The El-ho ‘decided to dig up the pole with my hands, since it was only standing in dune sand, because I thought of pulling the nails out of it.’ This recalls the fact that Torst's companions found on the beach at Rottnest Island ‘a piece of Dutch timber with nails sticking in it, which seems to be from a wrecked ship’ (p. 154). The El-ho returns to such details when, after a lengthy interlude concerning the goods from his buried sea-chest, his building of shelters and so on, he recovers further quantities of material from a wreck that fortuitously drifts his way. After retrieving a sloop from it, he mentions ‘having made some oars out of the wainscot that I had broken from the Cabin and the Chamber’; which echoes Torst's having seen, at Rottnest, ‘a piece of wainscot on the beach about three feet long and a span wide’ (ibid.).

The ensuing development in the El-ho's narrative concerns the cache of goods buried for him; it has no direct equivalent in Torst's journal, although similarities with other literary sources are evident. It seems to be Smeeks's own embroidery of the basic story, and closely resembles corresponding sections in Robinson Crusoe. Such elements include the book-keeping precision of his inventory, the warehouse-like structures he builds to house ‘my property’, devotional and writerly themes (his goods include a Bible and ‘2 25-pack sheets of paper, 1 Leaden Ink-well, with 1 jar of Ink’), his multiple camps and seigneurial attitude to the place (‘I drank a tot with my pipe, like a Gentleman’ ... ‘my River’ ... ‘I imagined I owned a Castle’ ... ‘Now I was Lord of two Castles’ ... ‘here I meant to build a Fortress!’ ... ‘my other Houses [eventually numbering thirteen]’ ... ‘considering myself as rich as a King’, etc.). The making of candles or wicker-work containers and furniture, guiding of a boat (El-ho) or raft (Robinson) into a lagoon, or finding of a dog in a wrecked ship are other motifs prominent in both novels. A compelling such detail is the ladder that both heroes make in order to secure their dwelling.

However, some of these elements do also appear in Torst's account. The rude huts constructed by the El-ho and Robinson reflect those mentioned several times by Torst, in conjunction with footprints. The El-ho ‘slept on

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dried leaves in a wicker bedstead, which was very good’, and Robinson had a similar bed; but Torst had found ‘three small huts and in one of these much bark of a tree known in the Indies by the name of Liplap, which in my opinion will have served them for bedding’ (p. 156).

Just before this, furthermore, he had noticed ‘several trees and among these a kind whose wood had an aromatic fragrance, almost like Lignum Rhodii’; and just afterwards, he mentions that ‘no vermin are found here but by day the flies are a terrible torment.’ The El-ho, eventually captured by the local ‘Beachdwellers’ and taken to their settlement, came on the way to ‘a pond, where stood some thousand little baskets woven from twigs ...; I did not know what this signified; but when after an hour's walk the Sun rose a little higher, I saw millions of mosquitoes and flies come up from the marsh, at which they immediately lit a fire, and each caused the bark in his basket to smoke; this smoke had a pleasant smell, and kept all mosquitoes and flies away from us.’

Another motif common to the El-ho and Robinson stories was discussed by Hubbard (1921, xlvii-xlviii): a large bird that both heroes shoot. Giant birds (such as the albatross) were, indeed, one of the wonders' traditionally associated with the austral regions, and held allegorical implications for many literary writers; the theme is also prominent in Foigny's novel, which no doubt inspired Smeeks's use of the theme. But Torst's men too reported finding ‘a great many eggshells’ at the site with the eighteen-inch footprints. They brought back to camp ‘a large bird's head (and) had seen two nests made of branches, some three fathoms big in circumference’, and also sighted a ‘large nest protruding from the corner of a great cliff, made in the manner of a stork's nest’ (pp. 158-159). Again, the El-ho notes that his bird had quills ‘more than twice as thick as a Swan's’. Black swans were, of course, the famous discovery that De Vlamingh's men made at the Swan River; and Torst records that they brought back two young ones on first landing there.

Birds are prominent earlier in Torst's account; indeed, much further suggestive material is found there, beyond that in the Australian section of his journal. The latter is for nearly half its length concerned with the voyage from Texel to the Southland via Tristan de Cunha, the Cape of Good Hope, and Amsterdam and St. Paul Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. In the Atlantic, for example, were ‘multicoloured gulls (and) many different kinds’ (p. 147); and in the Indian Ocean, ‘black birds with grey bellies’ (p. 153). Also prefigured there were ‘fishy’ motifs: flying fish were seen, and at St. Paul many seals; and, as they approached Australia, ‘a sea-devil (and) a miraculous fish about two feet long with a round head and arms and legs of a kind, nay even something like hands’ (p. 153).

Again, a ‘large basin with brackish water’ is reported at St. Paul, and in ‘another two such places very brackish water’ (pp. 149, 151). Seals were

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beaten to death there, with a club-like stick resembling one that the El-ho makes for himself early in his ordeal; and the crews ‘caught a fine amount of perch’ - ‘by way of bidding farewell’ they ate ‘a fine lot of St Paul perch caught in the afore-mentioned basin, waterfish with parsley, sauce and fried fish’ (p. 151). This detail may explain why the El-ho mentions that the fish he caught were perch, unlike those in Torst's corresponding Australian passages.

Further expanding this comparison between the El-ho and Torst accounts, one finds many echoes of both in the main body of Smeeks's text - the imaginary voyage and utopian encounter. They are further evidence of the way he allegorized historical material, converting it into literature by exploiting its symbolic potential. It is not possible to pursue this aspect here; but the essential point is that the correspondences with Torst's journal become significant in the light of earlier such novels: in particular, of those of Foigny and Vairasse, the ones presented with the journal in the 1701 work. It was their sophistication in drawing out the relationship between rhetoric and ideology that suggested to Smeeks a thematization of the notices left by Hartog or De Vlamingh and later found by others; one that formed the kernel of the literary theme of marooning, as taken up later by Defoe and numerous others.

That Smeeks realized this potential argues powerfully for his originality and merit as a novelist, and for his place in the background to Robinson Crusoe. In tracing the latter one must also, however, recognize the role the 1701 work played in the composition of Krinke Kesmes itself. By bringing together similar themes from fictional and factual sources it offered Smeeks, so to speak, a ‘kitset novel’. Part of the credit for this effect must go to Willem Lamsvelt, or whoever conceived that bizarre assemblage;^11. but in any case it is clear that Defoe built on what others had in essence done before him. His known Dutch involvements further make an independent invention seem unlikely. It is time to accept that Robinson arose out of an earlier, more international, and more esoteric literature.

11. The work was put out by a consortium headed by him: see Fausett (n. 2), Strange Surprizing Sources, 137. Significantly, it was a later Samuel Lamsvelt who re-issued Krinke Kesmes in 1732 and 1755, following the troubled earlier editions by Nicolaas ten Hoorn.

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Summary

Krinke Kesmes (1708) by Hendrik Smeeks is an obscure novel about a voyage to Australia (or ‘New Holland’) and the utopian society encountered there. It has interested literary historians mainly as a precursor to Robinson Crusoe, as it contains a digression in which a youth is marooned; a highly realistic one, which has aroused speculation about a possible real source for it. The article reviews this problem and makes a detailed comparison of Smeeks's text with a journal from Willem de Vlamingh's expedition to Australia in 1697-1697. It concludes that this was the main source used - not on it own, but as part of a composite edition which included literary works. The total effect of that edition was to inspire a poetics of marooning, later carried forward by Defoe.