CHAPTER XTI 



THE STORY OF A LOST ARCHIPELAGO. 



THE most interesting feature in the history of the discovery of 

 the Solomon Group is the circumstance that during a period 

 of two liundred years after it was first discovered by the Spaniards 

 it was lost to the world and its very existence doubted. In the 

 belief that I shall be treading on ground new to the general reader, 

 I will at once pass on to relate how this large archipelago was lost 

 and found again. 



Fancied discoveries of the precious metals in the island of 

 Guadalcanar inflamed the imaginations of the Spaniards : and the 

 reports, which they gave on their return to Pern, in 1568, of the 

 wealth and fertility of the newly-found lands, cast a glamour of 

 romance over the scene of their discoveries which the lapse of three 

 hundred years has not been able altogether to remove. 



To colonize his new discovery and add one more to the vast pos- 

 sessions of Spain, became the life-long ambition of Mendana. In 

 order to further his great aim, he gave to these islands the name of 

 the " Isles of Salomon," to the end that the Spaniards, supposing 

 them to be the islands whence Solomon obtained his gold for the 

 temple at Jerusalem, might be induced to go and inhabit them. 

 Thus, the name of the new discovery was itself a " pious fraud," if 

 we may believe the story of Lopez Vaz,^ a Portuguese, who was cap- 

 tured by the English, nearly twenty years afterwards, at the River 

 Plate. This seems to me to be the explanation of the name, which 

 we ought, in fairness, to receive ; since, after reading the narrative 

 of Gallego, it is scarcel}^ crediting the Spaniards with ordinary 

 reasoning faculties to imagine that Mendana and his officers really 

 thought that they had found the Opliir of Solomon. 



However, many years rolled by ; and Mendana had arrived at 



'■ "Purclias, his Pilgrimes," Part IV., Lib. VIL 



