TORRES 15 



thirty-five days as were not spent ashore. The chart, whether the 

 credit of the surveying or only of the draughtsmanship belongs to 

 Prado, agrees so well with modern Admiralty Charts of that 

 portion of the island, that there can be no question of the accuracy 

 of Captain Cook's identification made, of course, without the 

 assistance of Prado's Chart, which, in 1770, lay unknown in the 

 Spanish archives. 



Sir Clements Markham, for many years President of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, had no difficulty in admitting the honesty 

 of Quiros' belief that he had discovered the southern land, and 

 wrote of his approach to the Island of Espiritu Santo : 



" Island after island, all lofty and thickly inhabited, rose upon the horizon, and 

 at last he sighted such extensive coast-lines that he believed the Southern Continent 

 to be spread out before him. The islands of the New Hebrides Group, such as 

 Aurora, Leper, and Pentecost, overlapping each other to the south-east, seemed to 

 him to be continuous coast-lines, while to the south-west was the land which he 

 named Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. All appeared to his vivid imagination to be 

 one continuous continental land." 



The expedition, as has been mentioned, remained in the Bay 

 of Saints Philip and James for thirty- five days, viz., from 3rd May 

 to 8th June, 1606, the numerous anchorages laid down on Prado's 

 chart showing how thoroughly the shores must have been examined. 

 The sailors made themselves very much at home and behaved with 

 such arrogance, cruelty and rapacity that the natives treated them 

 with well- merited hostility, and although Quiros " deplored " such 

 excesses, he seems to have taken no suitable steps to stop them, 

 beyond formally prohibiting profane swearing and other unseemly 

 practices. It is noteworthy that the outrageous conduct of Prado 

 was so far condoned that he figured in the list of officers of the 

 municipality of the New Jerusalem as Depositario General. This 

 term is translated by Markham as " General Storekeeper," but in 

 my opinion, the fact that Prado carried off with him, among other 

 things, the manuscript, or at least a copy, of the new chart of the 

 bay and its environs, favours the view that the office held by him 

 was the more responsible one of receiver or recorder. 



The three vessels left the bay on 8th June, presumably with the 

 intention of coasting along the continent to the north-west, or, 

 should Espiritu Santo prove to be a cape, of running south-west to 

 20 S., north-west to 4, and west on that parallel to the coast of 

 New Guinea, given an open sea, in accordance with the spirit of the 

 instructions given to Torres for his guidance in the event of a 

 separation. As soon, however, as they cleared the cape which 

 formed the north-western horn of the bay, they met with a strong 

 wind from the south-east and endeavoured to get back into the 

 bay for shelter. In this attempt the " Almirante " and the tender 

 succeeded, but the FLAGSHIP was blown further and further to 



