STORY OF A LOST ARCHIPELAGO. 265 



Arsacides of Surville and the Choiseul of Bougainville, and that the 

 French and English navigators had independently of each other 

 discovered the lost Solomon Group, that M. Fleurieu published in 

 Paris in 1790 his " Decouvertes des Frangois en 1768 et 1769 dans 

 le sud-est de la Nouvelle Guinee."^ " The desire of restoring to the 

 French nation its own discoveries, which an emulous and jealous 

 neighbour has endeavoured to appropriate to herself, induced us," 

 thus the author wrote in his preface to his work, " to connect in one 

 view, all those that we have made towards the south-east of New 

 Guinea ; and particularly to prove, that the great land, which Short- 

 land imagined he discovered in 1788, and to which he gave the 

 name of New Georgia, is not a new land, but the southern coast of 

 the Archipelago of the Arsacides, the famous Islands of Solomon, 

 one part of which was discovered after two centuries by M. de Bou- 

 gainville in 1768, and another more considerable by M. de Surville 

 in 1769." I need not refer to the detailed arguments of this learned 

 geographical writer. Under his arguments, Surville's appellation of 

 Terre des Arsacides and Sliortland's of New Georgia,^ finally gave 

 place to the original title given by the Spanish navigator. " It was 

 the work of M. de Fleurieu," thus writes Krusenstern,^ the Russian 

 voyager and hydrographer, " that removed once and for all any 

 doubt that might have been held about the identity of the disco- 

 veries of Bougainville, Surville, and Shortland, with the Solomon 

 Islands." Another illustrious navigator, Dumont D'Urville,^ thus 

 alludes to the successful labours of his countrymen, . . . " Le labo- 

 rieux Bnache et Thabile Fleurieu travaillerent tour a tour a etablir 

 cette identite qui, depuis, est devenue un fait acquis a la science 

 geographique ; les lies relevees par Surville et par Bougainville sont 

 r^ellement I'archipel Salomon de Mindana." Thus the lost archi- 

 pelago was found, not so much by the fortuitous course of the 

 navigator as by the patient investigations of the geographer in his 

 stud}^ The result is intrinsically of little importance to the world 

 at large ; but, as an example of the success of a laborious yet dis- 

 criminate research, it may afford encouragement to all who endeavour 

 to add something to the sum of knowledge. 



I will now refer briefly to the voyagers who subsequently visited 



^ English translation published in London in 1791. 



- The designation of New Georgia has been retained in the modern charts for that portion 

 of the sroup which is known as Eubiana. 



•' " Reciieil de Memoires Hydrographiques," St. Pttersburgh, 1S24. Part I., p. 157. 

 •* "Histoire Gen^rale des Voyages," Paris, 1859; p. 22S. 



