STORY OF A LOST ARCHIPELAGO. 251 



enterprise. Barely half of the four hundred souls who had left 

 Peru under such bright auspices could have reached the Philippines. 

 Among them, however, was Quiros the. pilot of Mendana, who, 

 nothing daunted by disaster and ill-success, returned to Peru and 

 endeavoured to re-awaken the spirit of discovery which was losing- 

 much of its enthusiasm with the departing glory of the Spanish 

 nation. The Viceroy of Peru referred him to the Court of Spain ; 

 and, after experiencing for several years the effects of those intrigues 

 which seem to have been the accustomed fate of the early navigators, 

 Quiros set sail from Callao at the close of 1605, to search the Southern 

 Ocean once again for the Isles of Salomon and the other unknown 

 lands in that region. He had been supplied with two ships, and 

 was accompanied by Luis Vaez de Torres as second in command. 

 It is unnecessary to enter here into the particulars of the vo3'^age 

 across the Pacific. It will be sufficient for my purpose to state that 

 Quiros j&nally sought the parallel of 10" south, and sailed westward 

 in the direction of Santa Cruz, which he had discovered with 

 Mendana ten years before. Being rather to the northward of the lati- 

 tude of Santa Cruz, he struck a small group of islands, the principal 

 of which was called Taumaco by the natives. These islands have 

 been identified with the Duff Group, which lies about 65 miles 

 north-east of Santa Cruz. Nearly two centuries had passed away 

 before these islands were again seen by Europeans, when they were 

 sighted by Captain Wilson of the missionary ship " Duff," in 1797. 

 During the ten days spent by the Spaniards at Taumaco, Quiros 

 obtained information of a number of islands and large tracts of 

 land in the neighbourhood, which seemed to confirm him in his 

 belief in a vast unknown extent of land in the Southern Ocean. 

 The list of these islands are included in a memorial subsequently 

 presented by Quiros to Philip 11. of Spain, which contains many 

 particulars of the discoveries of the expedition in this region. Some 

 of them I have been able to identify with names on existing charts, 

 but referring my reader to Note XIV. of the Geographical Appendix, 

 I will only allude here to the most interesting reference in this 

 memorial, which is to a large country named Pouro, that is without 

 doubt the large island of St. Christoval in the Solomon Group, 

 which lay rather under 300 miles to the westward. The central 



^ Dairy mple's Hist. Coll. of Voyages : vol. I, p. 145. This memorial is given in tlie 

 original in Purchas, (His Pilgrimes, Part VI, Lib. VH, Chap. 10.) Fide also De Brcsses 

 " Histoire des Navigations aux Teries Australes : " torn. I, p. 341 : Paris 1756. 



