148 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



assemblies, to murmur and to talk." They had already 

 sailed beyond the distances given by Mendana, and the 

 sailors knew it, and blamed the innocent Pilot as well 

 as the Adelantado (Governor). " The Isles of Solomon," 

 said some, " had fled away, or the Adelantado had 

 forgotten where they were ! To call himself a Marquis, 

 and to advance his relatives, he had taken them, with 

 four hundred pounds of biscuits, to perish, to go to the 

 bottom, and to fish there for the wonderful pearls ! We 

 shall go on to Great Tartary ! No one knows where we 

 are ! " And Quiros knew that they were right. A pro- 

 digious mistake had been made by Mendana and Gallego 

 in their calculations. The Solomons were, in fact, two 

 thousand miles further away from Callao than they had 

 thought. 1 It would not be right, Quiros explains, 

 to blame a Pilot of the high character and great skill 

 of Gallego. Such mistakes are inevitable. " Longitude 

 is not fixed except by such estimation as each one may 

 make, and in this there may be very great error." 1 

 Santa Cruz, At length, on the 7th of September, they saw a 

 e P I 595- lovely island. That same night the Almirante, under 

 the Admiral Lope de Vega, vanished, and was never 

 seen again. Quiros writes of the event in the manner 

 of one who could say more than he thinks it wise to say. 

 " I make no favourable conjecture," he writes. Mendana 

 suspected that de Vega had deserted him. " All saw that 

 his thoughts were bitter ; he was always apprehensive 

 of the loss of this ship, for many reasons which might be 

 given." 3 



1 " The discoverers themselves estimated the distance at seventeen 

 hundred leagues (six thousand eight hundred miles) which is nearly 

 two thousand miles short of the actual distance." Discovery of the 

 Solomons, ed. Amherst, p. Ixxii. 



2 Amherst (p. Ixxii) quotes Pigafetta's statement : " Pilots now- 

 a-days are satisfied with knowing the latitude, and are so presumptuous 

 that they refuse to hear the mention of longitude." 



3 It seems probable that the Almirante sank during the foggy night. 

 It seems unlikely that she deserted, for she was very short both of water 

 and of fuel. The Admiral had complained that only nine jars of water 

 were left for 180 persons, and that it had been found necessary to burn 

 boxes and the upper work of the ship. " He told the General of his 



