JOUENAL OF GALLEGO. 239 



it was evident that they were about to pass through the Marshall 

 Islands, and that if they should sight land, I had only to compare 

 the description of Gallego with the present chart of this group, in 

 order to identify this discovery with one of the atolls that there 

 exist. ( Vide Note XII. of the Geographical Appendix.) 



Continuing their course to the northward, they began to get 



short of water, and the people sickened and ^ On the 22nd 



of September, they attained the latitude of 11 1°, and running due 

 north along the meridian, they reached the latitude of 19^° on Octo- 

 ber 2nd, when they discovered " a low islet enclosing the sea after 

 the manner of a fishing-net, and surrounded by reefs." " We were 

 hove-to all that night," , . . writes Gallego, ..." believing that it 

 was inhabited, and that we should be able to obtain water. But 

 there were only sea-birds living on it; and its surface was sandy 

 with some patches of bushes. It is probably two leagues in circuit : 

 and is in latitude 19^° north of the Equinoctial. As it was the Day 

 of San Francisco, we named it the Isle of San Francisco." 



This island of San Francisco has not been identified by previous 

 writers with any island in the present chart, as Figueroa supplied 

 them with the latitude alone, but gave no reliable account from 

 which they might be able to follow the previous track; nor, in fact, 

 in the times of Burney and Krusensfern, who were the last to devote 

 any considerable attention to the discoveries of Mendana, was this 

 part of the Pacific sufficiently well known to enable even a confident 

 surmise to be made. Commodore Wilkes, amongst others, has swept 

 more than one phantom-island from this region. The track of the 

 Spanish ships northward from the Marshall Group brought them, in 

 fact, to a little coral-atoll, named Wake's Island in the present chart, 

 and lying in 19° 10' 54" N. lat. This is the Isle of San Francisco, 

 which is but little altered in appearance in our own day.^ 



Keeping the same northerly course, they passed the limit of the 

 tropic of Cancer on October 7th ; and in another week they' had 

 reached the latitude of 30°. They now shaped their course north- 

 east; and Gallego consulted the other pilots as to the position of the 

 land, and as to the bearing of the Cabo de Fortunas ^ (Cape Fortune). 

 " They told me in reply," .... as the Chief Pilot informs us, ... . 

 " that we were already in the vicinity of land, that this cape la}'', in 



■^ ''Murierou hartos." To avoid falling into a serious mistake, I have not translated 

 "this, more especially as Figueroa refers to no deaths on board during the voyage to Peru. 

 2 Vide 'Note XIII. of the Geographical Appendix for further information on this subject, 

 s This cape is evidently referred to as on the Caiifornian coast ; I cannot identify it. 



