The Solomon Islands and Their Natives Part 28

[343] Figueroa implies the second day; whilst Quiros speaks of "two days."

[344] Dalrymple's Historical Collection of Voyages: vol. I., 58.

Thus terminated the attempt of the Spaniards to found a colony in the Solomon Islands; and the ill fate which it experienced was scarcely calculated to encourage others to undertake a similar enterprise.

Barely half of the four hundred souls who had left Peru under such bright auspices could have reached the Philippines. Among them, however, was Quiros the pilot of Mendana, who, nothing daunted by disaster and ill-success, returned to Peru and endeavoured to re-awaken the spirit of discovery which was losing much of its enthusiasm with the departing glory of the Spanish nation. The Viceroy of Peru referred him to the Court of Spain; and, after experiencing for several years the effects of those intrigues which seem to have been the accustomed fate of the early navigators, Quiros set sail from Callao at the close of 1605, to search the Southern Ocean once again for the Isles of Salomon and the other unknown lands in that region. He had been supplied with two s.h.i.+ps, and was accompanied by Luis Vaez de Torres as second in command. It is unnecessary to enter here into the particulars of the voyage across the Pacific. It will be sufficient for my purpose to state that Quiros finally sought the parallel of 10 south, and sailed westward in the direction of Santa Cruz, which he had discovered with Mendana ten years before. Being rather to the northward of the lat.i.tude of Santa Cruz, he struck a small group of islands, the princ.i.p.al of which was called Taumaco by the natives. These islands have been identified with the Duff Group, which lies about 65 miles north-east of Santa Cruz. Nearly two centuries had pa.s.sed away before these islands were again seen by Europeans, when they were sighted by Captain Wilson of the missionary s.h.i.+p "Duff," in 1797. During the ten days spent by the Spaniards at Taumaco, Quiros obtained information of a number of islands and large tracts of land in the neighbourhood, which seemed to confirm him in his belief in a vast unknown extent of land in the Southern Ocean. The list of these islands are included in a memorial[345] subsequently presented by Quiros to Philip II. of Spain, which contains many particulars of the discoveries of the expedition in this region. Some of them I have been able to identify with names on existing charts, but referring my reader to Note XIV. of the Geographical Appendix, I will only allude here to the most interesting reference in this memorial, which is to _a large country named Pouro_, that is without doubt the large island of St.

Christoval in the Solomon Group, which lay rather under 300 miles to the westward. The central portion of St. Christoval is at present called _Bauro_, and by this name the whole island is often known to the natives of the islands around. Thus, without suspecting it, Quiros had described to him an island of the lost Solomon Group, and the very island which had been more completely explored than any other by the expedition of Mendana nearly forty years before. Had he been in possession of Gallego's journal, in which the native name of _Paubro_ is given to St.

Christoval, he would have at once recognised in this _Pouro_ of the Taumaco natives the _Paubro_ of Mendana's expedition. His informant spoke to him of silver arrows which had been brought from _Pouro_, but this circ.u.mstance did not set him on the right track; and thus for the second time this enterprising navigator unwittingly let the chance pa.s.s by of finding the Isles of Salomon.[346]

[345] Dalrymple's Hist. Coll. of Voyages: vol. I, p. 145. This memorial is given in the original in Purchas, (His Pilgrimes, Part VI, Lib. VII, Chap. 10.) _Vide_ also De Brosses "Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes:" tom. I, p. 341: Paris 1756.

[346] The question of this name of Pouro is further treated in Note XV. of the Geographical Appendix, since an attempt has been made by Mr. Hale, the American philologist, to identify it with the Bouro of the Indian Archipelago.

The opportunity had gone; and, for this reason, the remainder of this voyage of Quiros has no interest in connection with the Solomon Group.

The information which he had obtained of the numerous islands and tracts of land in the vicinity of Taumaco seems to have banished from his mind all thoughts of the missing group. Steering southward, and pa.s.sing without seeing the island of Santa Cruz of which he had been in search, he reached the island of Tucopia, of which he had previously obtained information from the natives of Taumaco. Continuing his course, he finally anch.o.r.ed in a large bay which indented the coast of what he believed was the Great Southern Continent. The name Australia del Espiritu Santo was given by him to this new land, when flushed with the success of his discovery. In the hour of his supposed triumph, fortune again frowned on the efforts of the Spanish navigator. A mutiny broke out on board his s.h.i.+p, and Quiros was compelled by his crew to abandon the enterprise. Without being able to acquaint Torres of what had happened, he left the anchorage unperceived in the middle hours of the night, and after making an ineffectual attempt to find Santa Cruz, he sailed for Mexico. Torres, after ascertaining that the supposed southern continent was an island,[347] continued his voyage westward, and, pa.s.sing through the straits which bear his name, ultimately arrived at Manilla.

[347] This island is one of the New Hebrides, and still retains its Spanish name of Espiritu Santo.

The results of the expeditions in which Quiros had been engaged could hardly have been looked upon with feelings of great satisfaction at the Spanish Court, where the veteran navigator in the true spirit of Columbus now repaired to advocate the colonization of the Australia del Espiritu Santo he had just discovered. The Isles of Salomon had been also discovered, it is true; but two succeeding expeditions had failed to find them. Santa Cruz had similarly eluded the efforts of Quiros; and his last discovery of the supposed southern continent had been proved by his companion, Torres, to be an island. Several years had pa.s.sed away, and Quiros was an old man before his wishes for a new expedition were granted. In furtherance of the exploration of the Isles of Salomon and the Australia del Espiritu Santo, he is said to have presented no less than fifty memorials to the king; in one of which, after painting in the brightest colours the beauty and fertility of his last discovery, he thus addresses his Sovereign: "Acquire, sire, since you can, acquire heaven, eternal fame, and that new world with all its promises." Such appeals coming from one who might fitly be called the Columbus of his age could scarcely be rejected by the monarch. In 1614, Quiros, bearing a commission from the king, departed from Spain on his way to Callao, where he intended to fit out another expedition. Death, however, overtook him at Panama on his way to Peru; and with Quiros died all the grand hopes, which he had fostered, of adding the unknown southern continent to the dominion of Spain. Had he lived to carry out his project, Australia might have become a second Peru. The spirit of enterprise on the part of the Spanish nation never again extended itself into this region of the Western Pacific. During the next century and a half the large island-groups, which the Spaniards had discovered in these seas, were not visited by any European navigators;[348] and it is surprising how few benefits have accrued to geography from these three Spanish expeditions to these regions. Their discoveries have had to be rediscovered; and it has been only by a laborious process on the part of the geographer that the navigator has been able to make any use of the imperfect information, which the Spanish navigators have bequeathed to us of their discoveries in these seas.

[348] In 1616, the Dutch navigator, Le Maire, when he discovered and named the Horne Islands in lat. 14 56' S. and Hope Island in 16 S.

thought that he had found the Solomon Islands; but these islands lie more than a thousand miles to the eastward of this group.

Dalrymple's Hist. Coll., vol. II., p. 59.

The death of Quiros deepened more than ever the mystery that was thrown over the Isles of Salomon. Although Herrera[349] had published in 1601 a short description of these islands, which he must have derived from official sources, no account of the first voyage of Mendana was published until nearly half a century after the return of the expedition to Peru, when in 1613 a short narrative appeared in a work written by Dr. Figueroa.[350] However, the exaggerated description, such as Lopez Vaz had given, obtained by virtue of prepossession a stronger hold on the memories of the sea-faring world. The same spirit of jealousy against other nations, which had compelled Gallego to suppress his journals, and had so long withheld any account of Mendana's discoveries, now doomed to destruction the several memorials and doc.u.ments of Quiros; but fortunately the work of destruction was not completed. The consequence of such proceedings was to greatly heighten the exaggerated misconceptions relating to the Isles of Salomon. We learn from Purchas[351] that Richard Hakluyt was informed in London in 1604, by a Lisbon merchant, of an expedition which had left Lima in 1600 and had fallen in "with divers rich countries and islands not far from the islands of Salomon. One chief place they called Monte de Plata, for the great abundance of silver there is like to be there. For they found two crowns' worth of silver in two handfuls of dust, and the people gave them for iron as much and more in quant.i.ty of silver."[352] Amongst the misconceptions which prevailed is one which we find in a memorial addressed by Dr. Juan Luis Arias to Philip III. of Spain,[353] where he refers to the discovery of "New Guadalca.n.a.l" and "San Christoval" as quite distinct from Mendana's subsequent discovery, as he alleges, of the Isles of Salomon; and he alludes to the opinion of some that New Guadalca.n.a.l was a part of New Guinea. In Peru the actual existence of these islands came to be doubted; and successive viceroys held it a political maxim to treat the question of the existence of the Solomon Islands as a romance.[354]

[349] _Vide_ page 192.

[350] _Vide_ page 192.

[351] "His Pilgrimes," vol. IV., p. 1432.

[352] Geographical writers are not agreed as to whether this allusion refers to one of the voyages of Quiros or not. From the date it would appear probable that it refers to Mendana's second voyage, when Quiros was chief pilot.

[353] A translation is given by Mr. Major in his "Early Voyages to Terra Australis."

[354] Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. XIV., p. 12.

The jealous att.i.tude, a.s.sumed by Spain towards other nations with reference to these discoveries, succeeded only too well in bewildering the geographers who endeavoured to ascertain the true position of the Solomon Islands; and so varied were the opinions on the subject, that the lat.i.tude a.s.signed to them varied from 7 to 19 south, and the longitude from 2400 miles to 7500 miles west of Peru. Acosta, in 1590, ignorant of the materials several years after placed at the disposal of Figueroa, located these islands about 800 leagues[355] west of Peru, and Herrera gives them the same position,[356] a longitude which Lopez Vaz had previously given them in the account obtained from him in 1586 by Captain Withrington. The discoverers themselves, if we may trust the estimates given in the accounts of Gallego and Figueroa, and in the memorials of Quiros, considered that the Solomon Islands were removed about double this distance from the coast of Peru. Their estimates vary between 1500 and 1700 Spanish leagues, whereas the true distance is about 2100 leagues or from 1500 to 2000 miles west of the position a.s.signed by the discoverers. In his second voyage, Mendana was misled by this small estimate when he at first mistook the Marquesas for his previous discovery, the Isles of Salomon. I am inclined to consider that the Spanish navigators purposely under-estimated the distance of these islands from the coast of Peru, and that in so doing they were actuated by two motives. In the first place, they would be desirous to bring their discoveries within the line of demarcation fixed by the Papal Bull after the discovery of America by Columbus, by which the hemisphere west of a meridian 370 leagues west of the Azores was a.s.signed to Spain, and that to the east of this meridian to Portugal. Thus it was that Spain had had to deliver the Brazils to Portugal; and in possessing herself of the Moluccas she had appropriated by a geographical fraud lands which should have belonged to that nation.[357] Their other motive is probably to be found in that jealousy of spirit which, in order to prevent Drake and the English from finding their discoveries, caused the suppression of Gallego's journal and the burning of many of the memorials of Quiros.

[355] Spanish leagues, 17 to a degree.

[356] Herrera at the same time places them 1500 leagues from Lima!

[357] I am indebted to Mr. Dalrymple (Hist. Collect. of Voyages, vol. I., p. 51) for this explanation of the small estimates of the Spanish navigators.

Similar confusion prevailed amongst the early cartographers as to the position which they should a.s.sign to the Solomon Islands. As M.

Buache[358] points out, the first charts representing the Isles of Salomon, which were published at the end of the 16th century, made a near approximation to their true position by placing them to the east and at no great distance from New Guinea. Subsequent cartographers, however, were less happy in their guesses at the truth. In the "Arcano del Mare," published by Dudley, in 1646, the Solomon Islands were transported to the position of the Marquesas, with which they were thought identical. This position was generally received until early in last century, when Delisle adopted a position much nearer to that given in the early maps. M. Danville, however, later on in the century, being unable to reconcile the Spanish discoveries with the more recent discoveries in the South Seas, suppressed altogether the Isles of Salomon in his map of the world; and his example was followed by several other geographers, who were equally anxious to expunge the lost archipelago from their maps and to relegate it to the cla.s.s of fabulous lands.

[358] "Memoir concerning the existence and situation of Solomon's Islands," presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1781.

(Fleurieu's "Discoveries of the French in 1768 and 1769.")

After the death of Quiros, the Spanish nation ceased to favour any further enterprise in search of the missing archipelagos, which do not appear to have engaged the special attention of any nation. Generations thus pa.s.sed away, and the Solomon Islands were almost forgotten. But there lingered amongst the sea-faring population in Peru, memories of the missing islands of Mendana and Quiros, which were revived from time to time by some strange story told by men, who had returned to Callao from their voyage across the Pacific to Manilla. Even in the first quarter of last century, the mention of the Isles of Salomon suggested visions of beautiful and fertile lands, abounding in mineral wealth, and populated by a happy race of people who enjoyed a climate of perfect salubrity. This we learn from the narrative of Captain Betagh,[359] an Englishman, who, having been captured by the Spaniards in 1720, was detained a prisoner in Peru. He speaks of the arrival, not long before, of two s.h.i.+ps at Callao, which, though cruising independently in the Pacific, had both been driven out of their course and had made the Solomon Islands. A small s.h.i.+p was despatched to follow up their discovery: but as she was only victualled for two months, I need scarcely add that she did not find them. It is very probable that the islands made by the two s.h.i.+ps were the Marquesas.

[359] Pinkerton's "Voyages and Travels," vol. XIV., p. 12.

Not very long after this attempt to find the missing group, Admiral Roggewein,[360] the Dutch navigator, in his voyage round the world, sighted, in 1722, two large islands or tracts of land in the Western Pacific, which he named Tienhoven and Groningen (the Groningue of some writers). Behrens, the narrator of the expedition, considered them to be portions of the Terra Australis. Geographers, however, have differed widely in their attempts to identify these islands. Dalrymple and Burney held the opinion that these islands were none other than the Solomon Islands; but the question is of little importance to us, as no communication took place with the natives.

[360] Dalrymple's "Hist. Coll. of Voyages," vol. II.

In his "Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes," which was published in Paris, in 1756, De Brosses, after referring to the circ.u.mstance that geographers differed a thousand leagues in locating this group, inserts, as giving quite another idea of their position, the story of Gemelli Careri, when on his voyage from Manilla to Mexico, in command of the great galleon. It appears that when they were in 34 north lat., a canary flew on board and perched in the rigging. Careri at once inferred that the bird must have flown from the Solomon Islands, which lay, as he learned from the seamen of his vessel, two degrees further south. The source of the Spanish commander's information might have suggested some rather odd reflections: however, De Brosses, as if to justify this belief of the sailors of the galleon, refers to two islands, Kinsima (Isle of Gold) and Ginsima (Isle of Silver), lying about 300 leagues east of j.a.pan, which, having been kept secret by the j.a.panese, had been ineffectually sought for by the Dutch in 1639 and 1643.[361] De Brosses, it should be remembered, was writing when the Isles of Salomon were in the minds of many a myth. That this notion of the seamen of the galleon should suggest to him two legendary islands placed east of j.a.pan, islands believed by the Dutch not to belie their names in mineral wealth, sufficiently shows how wild speculation had become with reference to the position of this mysterious group.

[361] Tome I., p. 177.

In a few years, however, there was a revival of the spirit of geographical enterprise in England, under the enlightened auspices of George III.; and the time was approaching when, in antic.i.p.ation of the transit of Venus in 1769, the attention of the English and French astronomers and geographers was more specially directed to the South Pacific, with the purpose of selecting suitable positions for the observation of this phenomenon. M. Pingre, in his memoir on the selection of a position for observing the transit of Venus, which was read before the French Academy of Sciences in December, 1766, and January, 1767, gave a translation of the account given by Figueroa of Mendana's discovery of the Solomon Islands; but he did not throw much new light on their supposed position.

Whilst the attention of geographers was thus once more directed towards this part of the Pacific, the two English voyages of circ.u.mnavigation under Commodore Byron and Captain Carteret[362] supplied them with information, which pointed to the correctness of the view of the old cartographers that the Solomon Islands lay to the east, and not far removed from New Guinea. That Commodore Byron, when sailing in the supposed lat.i.tude of these islands in 1765, expected to fall in with them more towards the centre of the Pacific, is shown by the circ.u.mstance that he at first believed one of the islands of the group, subsequently named the Union Group, to be the Malaita of the Spaniards, an island which actually lay more than 1500 miles to the westward.

However, he continued his course in the track of the missing group, until he reached the longitude of 176 20' E. in lat.i.tude 8 13' S., a position more than 800 miles to the eastward of that a.s.signed to the Solomon Islands in his chart. Giving up the search, Commodore Byron steered northward to cross the equator, and ultimately shaped his course for the Ladrones. His remark in reference to his want of success augured ill for the future discovery of the Solomon Group, since he doubted whether the Spaniards had left behind any account by which it might be found by future navigators.

[362] Hawkesworth's Voyages (vol. I.) contains the accounts of these expeditions.

In August, 1766, another expedition consisting of two s.h.i.+ps, the "Dolphin," and the "Swallow," under the command of Captain Wallis, and Captain Carteret, sailed from Plymouth with the object of making further discoveries in the southern hemisphere. After a stormy pa.s.sage through the Straits of Magellan, the two s.h.i.+ps were separated just as they were entering the South Sea. This accidental circ.u.mstance proved fortunate in its results for geographical science, as each vessel steered an independent course. Whilst Captain Wallis in the "Dolphin" was exploring the coasts of Tahiti, Captain Carteret in the "Swallow" followed a track more to the southward, and ultimately brought back to Europe tidings of the long lost lands of Mendana and Quiros. In July, 1767, Captain Carteret being in 167 W. long, and 10 S. lat., kept his course westward in the same parallel "in hopes"--as he remarks--"to have fallen in with some of the islands called Solomon's Islands." After reaching the meridian of 177 30' E. long. in 10 18' S. lat., a position five degrees to the westward of that a.s.signed to the Solomon Islands in his chart, Captain Carteret came to the conclusion "that if there were any such islands their situation was erroneously laid down." He was afterwards destined to discover, unknown to himself, nearly a thousand miles to the westward, the very group whose existence he doubted.

Continuing his westerly course, he arrived at a group of islands, the largest of which he recognised as the Santa Cruz of Mendana, which had not been visited by Europeans since the disastrous attempt to found a Spanish Colony there more than 170 years before. With a crazy s.h.i.+p, and a sickly crew, Captain Carteret desisted from the further prosecution of his discoveries in those regions; and shaping his course W.N.W., he sighted in the evening of the second day a low flat island, one of the outlying islands of the Solomon Group, which, without suspecting the nature of his discovery, he called Gower Island, a name still preserved in the present chart.[363] During the night, the current carried him to the south, and brought him within sight of what he thought were two other large islands lying east and west with each other, which he named Simpson's Island, and Carteret's Island. Captain Carteret communicated with the natives, but did not anchor. These two islands have proved to be the forked northern extremity of the large island of Malaita. Keeping to the north-west, he subsequently discovered, off the north-west end of the group, a large atoll with nine small islands, which are known as the Nine Islands of Carteret. On the following morning he was fated, without being aware of it, to get another glimpse of the Solomon Islands. A high island, descried by him to the southward, which is named Winchelsea Island in his text, and Anson Island in his chart of the voyage, was in all probability the island of Bouka visited nearly a year afterwards by Bougainville, the French navigator. Thus the missing group was at length found, but without the knowledge of the English navigator who discovered it. He had, in truth, expected to find it 20 further to the east. It was reserved, however, for the geographer in his study to identify the discoveries of Carteret with the Isles of Salomon of Mendana.

[363] Captain Carteret communicated with the natives, but did not anchor.

At the end of June, 1768, Bougainville the French navigator,[364]

coming northward from his discovery of the Louisiade Archipelago and of the Australia del Espiritu Santo of Quiros, made the west coast of a large island, now known as Choiseul Island, one of the Solomon Islands.

When the s.h.i.+ps were about twenty miles south of the present Choiseul Bay, boats were sent to look for an anchorage, but they found the coast almost inaccessible. A second attempt was made to find an anchorage in Choiseul Bay, but, night coming on, the number of the shoals and the irregularity of the currents prevented the s.h.i.+ps from coming up to the anchorage. In this bay the boats were attacked by about 150 natives in ten canoes who were dispersed and routed by the second discharge of fire-arms. Two canoes were captured, in one of which was found the jaw of a man half broiled. The island was named Choiseul by its discoverer, and a river from which the natives had issued into the bay was called "la riviere des Guerriers." Pa.s.sing through the strait which bears his name, the French navigator coasted along the east side of Bougainville Island, and pa.s.sed off the island of Bouka. The natives who came off to the s.h.i.+p in their canoes displayed the cocoa-nuts they had brought with them, and constantly repeated the cry, "bouca, bouca, onelle." For this reason, Bougainville named the island, Bouca, which is the name it still retains on the chart. It is, however, evident from the narrative that the French navigator never regarded this name as that by which the island was known to its inhabitants. When Dentrecasteaux, during his voyage in search of La Perouse, lay off this island in his s.h.i.+ps in 1792, the natives who came off from the sh.o.r.e, as Labillardiere informs us,[365] made use of the same expression of "bouka." This eminent naturalist considered that the word in question was a term in the language of these islanders; and he refers to it as a Malay expression of negation, except when a pause is made on the first syllable when it signifies "to open." On leaving behind him the island of Bouka, Bougainville quitted the Solomon Group; but from his account it is apparent that he had no idea of having found the missing archipelago.

Referring to these islands in the introduction to his narrative, he writes:--"supposing that the details related of the wealth of these islands are not fabulous, we are in ignorance of their situation, and subsequent attempts to find them have been in vain. It merely appears that they do not lie between the eighth and twelfth parallels of south lat.i.tude." In Bougainville's plans and charts, these discoveries are referred to as forming part of the Louisiade Archipelago which he had found to the southward. In the general chart showing the track of his voyage, the Solomon Islands are placed about 350 miles north-west of the Navigator Islands; and they are there referred to as "Isles Salomon dont l'existence et la position sont douteuse."

[364] "Voyage autour du Monde en 1766-1769:" second edit, augmentee: Paris 1772.

[365] Labillardiere's "Voyage a la recherche de la Perouse:" Paris 1800: tome I., p. 227.

In June of the following year, 1769, there sailed from Pondicherry an expedition commanded by M. de Surville,[366] who was bound on some enterprise with the object of which we are still to a great extent unacquainted. It is, however, probable as we learn from Abbe Rochon,[367] that some rumour of an island abounding in wealth and inhabited by Jews, which was reported to have been lately seen by the English seven hundred leagues west of Peru, had led to the fitting out of this expedition. Not unlikely, stories of the wealth of the missing islands of Mendana had been revived by the arrival in India of some s.h.i.+p that had come upon them in her track across the Pacific; and the reference to their being populated by Jews may be readily understood when I allude to the fact that the form of the nose in one out of every five Solomon Islanders, and in truth in many Papuans, gives the face quite a Jewish cast. In October, 1769, Surville discovered and named Port Praslin on the north-east coast of Isabel, which was the same island of the Solomon Group that Mendana had first discovered two hundred years before. Here he stayed eight days, during which time his watering-parties came into lamentable conflict with the natives. Sailing eastward from Port Praslin, he sighted the Gower Island of Carteret, which he named Inattendue Island. Subsequently he reached Ulaua, which he called, on account of the unfavourable weather which he experienced in its vicinity, Ile de Contrariete. The attempt to send a boat ash.o.r.e was the occasion of another unfortunate affray with the natives, who were ultimately dispersed with grape-shot. It will be remembered that just two centuries before, the Spaniards in the brigantine came into conflict with these same islanders, and that they named their island La Treguada in consequence of their supposed treachery (_vide antea_). In the neighbourhood of Contrariete, Surville sighted three small islands, which he named Les Trois Surs (Las Tres Marias of the Spaniards), and near them another island, which he called Ile du Golfe, the Ugi or Gulf Island of the present chart. Sailing eastward, he apprehended from the trend of the neighbouring St. Christoval coast that he would become embayed; but his apprehensions were removed when he arrived at the extremity of this land, which he named Cape Oriental, and the two off-lying small islands of Santa Anna and Santa Catalina were called Iles de la Delivrance in token of the danger from which he had apparently been delivered. In total ignorance of the fact that he had been cruising amongst the islands of the lost archipelago of Mendana, Surville now directed his course for New Zealand; and on account of sanguinary conflicts with the natives of Port Praslin and Contrariete, he named his discoveries Terre des Arsacides or Land of the a.s.sa.s.sins.

[366] An account of this expedition is given in Fleurieu's "Discoveries of the French in 1768 and 1769 to the south-east of New Guinea:" London, 1791.

[367] "Voyages a Madagascar et aux Indes Orientales:" Paris, 1791.

In 1781, Maurelle, the Spanish navigator, in command of the frigate "Princesa," during his voyage from Manilla to San Blas on the west coast of Mexico,[368] came upon the Candelaria Shoals of Mendana, which lie off the north coast of Isabel Island. I have shown on page 200 that these Candelaria Shoals are no other than the Ontong Java of Tasman, which was identified by M. Fleurieu[369] with the discovery of Maurelle.

To the south-east of these shoals the "Princesa" approached another, which on account of the roaring of the sea was named El Roncador: this has been erroneously identified with the Candelaria Shoals by M.

Fleurieu, and it is so named on the present Admiralty charts. Thus it nearly fell to the lot of the Spanish nation to be amongst the first to find the group they had originally discovered; but Maurelle was not acquainted with his vicinity to the missing Isles of Salomon, and turning the head of his s.h.i.+p eastward, he proceeded on his voyage.

[368] An account of this voyage is given in "Voyage de la Perouse autour du Monde," par Milet-Mureau: London, 1799: vol. I., p. 201.

[369] "Discoveries of the French in 1768 and 1769," etc.: pp. 179, 18 .