248 STORY OF A LOST ARCHIPELAGO. 



it is probable that the reports to this effect ma}'' have originally 

 arisen out of the circumstance that, wlien the ships were being re- 

 fitted and provisioned at the port of Realejo, on the Nicaraguan 

 coast, for the completion of their voyage to Peru, the necessary 

 expenses, which amounted to 1800 pezos, were defrayed by the 

 Chief-Pilot, Gallego.i 



If the English captain, Withrington by name, who elicited this 

 information from his Portuguese prisoner, Lopez Vaz, had hoped to 

 have obtained any satisfactory account of the position of these 

 vaunted islands, he must have been grievously disappointed. He 

 learned from him that the Spaniards, having coasted along the island 

 of Guadalcanar until the parallel of 18° S. latitude without reaching 

 its extremity, were of the opinion that it formed " part of that con- 

 tinent which stretches to the strait of Magalhanes " (Magellan). 

 From this misconception, the idea arose that the Spaniards had dis- 

 covered the southern continent and that Gallego was the discoverer,^ 

 and so vague was the information of the extent of the newly-dis- 

 covered islands that, when in 1599, an English ship was carried by 

 tempest to 64° S. lat, the captain, on sighting some mountainous 

 land covered with snow, considered that it extended towards the 

 islands of Salomon.^ 



But to return to the long-deferred project of Mendana. Years 

 of delay seemed only to increase the desire of the first discoverer of 

 this group to complete his work. A change occurred in the vice- 

 royalty of Peru ; and under the auspices of the new Viceroy aii 

 expedition of four ships was fitted out, on which were embarked 

 sailors, soldiers, and emigrants to the total number of four hundred. 

 In 1595, more than a quarter of a century after the return of his 

 first expedition, Mendana, now an elderly man, sailed from Peru 

 accompanied by his wife. Donna Isabella Baretto. Fernandez de 

 Quiros, who had braved with his leader the perils of the first voyage 

 and had shared with him in the dislieartenings arising from a hope 

 so long deferred, now sei'ved under him as chief pilot. Their des- 

 tination was St. Christoval, the easternmost of the Solomon Group. 

 The imperfect knowledge x>f the navigator of those days was curiously 

 exhibited during this voyage. With the means at his command, it 

 was a comparatively easy matter to follow along one parallel of 



1 Vide page 245. 



- Daliymple's "Historical Collection of Voyages," &c., Vol. I., p. 96. 



3 "Turchas, his P.lgrimes," Vol. IV., p. 1391. 



