THE DISCOVERY OF THE MASCARENE ISLANDS. oOO 



been given to some island situated in latitude 5° S., or thereabouts, 

 of which Pere Hardouin speaks as being the Columns of Ephorus. 

 In the maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a group of 

 islands can be seen, situated to the east of the Amirantes, with 

 the name Islas Mascarenhas. There are some technical allusions 

 to these charts in the Voyage of Davis to the East Indies. " On 

 leaving the Comoro Islands (in 1599), the islands of Mascarenltas 

 were passed, without fear of the Amirante shoals, and, the 

 navigation continuing favourable, on the 23rd May the Maldive 

 islands were sighted." 



There are yet again other islands which have borne the name 

 Mascarenhas, as, in the map given by De Bry in IGOl, this name 

 is applied to islands placed between Diego-Garcia and the 

 Maldives. The same appears in the map appended to the 

 Voyage of Van-der-Hagen (1612). 



Meanwhile, it is especially to the Seychelles group that this 

 denomination has been given, and it is thus that Bellin, on his 

 map of the Eastern Ocean or Indian Sea, in 1756, has designated 

 that group of islets — the Isles Mascarenhas. Indeed, Masca- 

 renhas (Pierre 1) on leaving Mozambique, could not have taken at 

 the same time the direction of the island Amirante and that of 

 the islands Bourbon, Maurice, Rodrigues. We shall solve the 

 difficulty with the map of Ortelius, in 1570, where these 

 Mascarene islands, situated to the east of Amirante, are desig- 

 nated as isles de Vasco d'Acugna; and we find, in Ortelius, 

 Martinez de la Paente saying : " At one hundred and forty 

 leagues to the north of Madagascar are five small islands which 

 Vasco d'Act{g7ia discovered, and which bear his name." 



Let us admit, then, that the islands discovered by Pedro 

 Mascarenhas are the islands of Reunion or Bourbon, Mauritius, 

 and Rodrigues. . . . 



Pedro Mascarenhas arrived for the first time in this sea in 

 1512. He commanded one of the vessels of the fleet of Garcia de 

 Noronha. This fleet had a disastrous voyage, and arrived at 

 Mozambique the 11th March 1512. A Portuguese ship just come 

 from the Indies apprised the admiral that flie Viceroy, Alfonso 

 d' Albuquerque, believed that his fleet was destroyed. (Jarcia de 



