He notes that the mountains seemed lifted aloft in the air.

With his two ships, the small _Heemskirk_ and tiny _Zeehan_, he began to coast cautiously northward, looking for an opening eastward, and noting the high, cloud-clapped, double range of mountains, and the emptiness of the steep desolate coast, where neither smoke nor men, ships nor boats, were to be seen.

He could not guess that hidden in this wilderness was a wealth of coal and gold as valuable as the riches of Java.

He seems to have regarded New Zealand simply as a lofty barrier across his path, to be passed at the first chance.
Groping along, he actually turned into the wide opening which, narrowing further east into Cook's Strait, divides the North and South Islands.

He anchored in Golden Bay; but luck was against him.