372 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



in the woods, where we could hear their drum beating. 

 I immediately made signal to the boat to come on board, 

 and I took my measures to prevent our being dishonoured 

 in the future by such an abuse of the superiority of our 

 power." 



Espiritu Bougainville's words bring memories to the student's 



mind, and these memories were in his own mind as he 

 wrote. He called the group of islands " the archipelago 

 of the Cyclades." But " as for ourselves," he writes, 

 " everything conspired .to persuade us that it was the 

 ' Tierra Austral del Espiritu Santo.' Appearances seemed 

 to conform to Quiros's account ; and what we daily 

 discovered encouraged our researches. It is singular 

 enough that, exactly in the same Latitude and Longitude 

 where Quiros places his bay of St. Philip and St. James, 

 on a coast which at first sight seemed to be that of a con- 

 tinent, we should find a passage exactly of the same breadth 

 which he assigns to the entrance of his bay." 



Bougainville was right when he believed that he had 

 stumbled on Quiros's Espiritu Santo, unvisited since 

 1606. But he was, it seems, wrong when he believed 

 that he had entered the bay of St. Philip and St. James. 

 His chart seems to show that he did not visit the North 

 side of Santo, where lies that bay. He sailed through 

 the passage between Santo and Malicolo, and apparently 

 the " great inlet " was somewhere in the passage. 



Bougainville However, he was in Espiritu Santo where Quiros and 

 sails West. j orres h ac j been. And the geographical problem before 

 him now was something like that which Torres had faced 

 when he sailed hence. But, whereas Torres had plunged 

 South-West in search of an unknown Terra Australis, 

 Bougainville knew that in that direction was the unknown 

 Eastern coast of New Holland. How far away was this 

 coast it was impossible to guess. Campbell had declared 

 in 1744 that Espiritu Santo was actually part of New 

 Holland. And de Brosses' book of 1756 had printed 

 a map which gave the same view. But de Brosses' text, 

 as Cook afterwards pointed out, in defiance of de Brosses' 

 map, declared that " all the vast interval lying between 



