STORY OF A LOST ARCHIPELAGO. 2G3 



The names of the numerous headlands^ on the south side of the 

 Solomon Group, bear witness in the present cliart to the accurate 

 observations of the Eno-lish navi g-ator : and from him Mount Lammas, 

 the highest peak of Guadalcanar, received its name. Like Bou- 

 gainville and Surville, Shortland was not acquainted with the nature 

 of his discoveries.^ 



It now remained for the geographers to avail themselves of the 

 materials placed at their disposal by the voyages of the French and 

 English navigators. M. Buache in a " Memoir on the Existence and 

 Situation of Solomon's Islands,"^ which was presented to the French 

 Academy of Sciences in 1781, deals with the discoveries of Carteret, 

 Bougainville, and Surville. The steps by which he arrived at the 

 conclusion that the groups of islands discovered by these navigators 

 were not only one and the same group, but that they were the long- 

 lost Isles of Salomon of Mendana, afford an instructive instance of 

 how a patient and laborious investigator, endowed with that gift of 

 discrimination which M. Buache employed with such laudable im- 

 partialit}^, may ultimately attain the truth he seeks, invested though 

 it be in clouds of mystery and contradiction. Groping along througli 

 a maze of conflicting statements, to which both navicjators and 

 geographers had in equal share contributed, M. Buache finally 

 emerged into the light of day, when he asserted in his memoir that 

 between the extreme point of New Guinea as fixed by Bougainville 

 and the position of Santa Cruz as determined by Carteret, there was 

 a space of 12i degrees of longitude, in which the Islands of Solomon 

 ought to be found. In this space, as he proceeded to show, lay the 

 large group discovered by Bougainville and Surville which, he with 

 confidence asserted, would prove to be none other than the long-lost 

 islands of the Solomon Group. 



But such a view of the character of the recent French discoveries 

 in these seas was received by English geographers with that spirit 

 of partiality from which the cause of geographical science has so 

 frequently suffered, Mr. Dalrymple in his " Historical Collection 

 of Voyages," published in 1770, before he had become acquainted 

 with the discoveries of Carteret, Bougainville, and Surville, stated 

 his conviction that there was no room to doubt that what Mendana 



^ Capes Philip, Henslow, Hunter, Satisfaction, etc. 



^Shortlaud communicated with, the natives of Simbo. An account of this voyage is 

 given in the " Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay : " London, 1789. 

 3 This memoir is given by Fleurieu in the ap^iendix of his work. 



