STORY OF A LOST AECHIPELAGO. 255 



wildering the geographers who endeavoured to ascertain the true 

 position of the Solomon Islands ; and so varied were the opinions on 

 the subject, that the latitude assigned to them varied from 7° to 19° 

 south, and the longitude from 2400 miles to 7500 miles west of 

 Peru. Acosta, in 1590, ignorant of the materials several years after 

 placed at the disposal of Figueroa, located these islands about 800 

 leagues ^ west of Peru, and Herrera gives them the same position,^ a 

 longitude which Lopez Vaz had previously given them in the account 

 obtained from him in 1586 by Captain Withrington. The dis- 

 coverers themselves, if we may trust the estimates given in the 

 accounts of Gall ego and Figueroa, and in the memorials of Quires, 

 considered that the Solomon Islands were removed about double 

 this distance from the coast of Peru. Their estimates vary between 

 1500 and 1700 Spanish leagues, whereas the true distance is about 

 2100 leagues or from 1500 to 2000 miles west of the position 

 assigned by the discoverers. In his second voyage, Mendana was 

 misled by this small estimate when he at first mistook the Marquesas 

 for his previous discovery, the Isles of Salomon. I am inclined to 

 consider that the Spanish navigators purposely under-estimated the 

 distance of these islands from the coast of Peru, and that in so doing 

 they were actuated by two motives. In the first place, they would 

 be desirous to bring their discoveries within the line of demarcation 

 fixed by the Papal Bull after the discovery of America by Columbus, 

 by which the hemisphere west of a meridian 370 leagues west of the 

 Azores was assigned to Spain, and that to the east of this meridian 

 to Portugal. Thus it was that Spain had had to deliver the Brazils 

 to Portugal ; and in possessing herself of the Moluccas she had appro- 

 priated by a geographical fraud lands which should have belonged 

 to that nation.^ Their other motive is probably to be found in that 

 jealousy of spirit which, in order to prevent Drake and the English 

 from finding their discoveries, caused the suppression of Gallego's 

 journal and the burning of many of the memorials of Quiros. 



Similar confusion prevailed amongst the early cartographers as 

 to the position which they should assign to the Solomon Islands. 

 As M. Buache* points out, the first charts representing the Isles of 



1 Spanish leagues, 17i to a degree. 



2 Herrera at the same time places them 1500 leagues from Lima ! 



3 I am indebted to Mr. Dalrymple (Hist. Collect, of Voyages, vol. I., p. 51) for this ex- 

 planation of the small estimates of the Spanish navigators. 



4 "Memoir concerning the existence and situation of Solomon's Islands, " presented to 

 the Eoyal Academy of Sciences in 1781. (Fleurieu's "Discoveries of the French in 1708 and 

 1769.") 



