DISCOVERY AND EARLY HISTORY 3 



life- story. I have, therefore, been brief in my references 

 to the early chapters of the island history, and have only 

 gathered together such fragments as seem fairly reliable and 

 sufficiently interesting. Most of the details that are available 

 have been collected by Dr. Guppy, who published an account 

 of the islands in 1889; and others lie scattered through the 

 Blue Books of the Straits Settlements Government. From 

 both of these sources I have taken such odds and ends as help 

 to fill in the gap between the time of the discovery of the 

 group, and the arrival of Ross Primus. 



There is no doubt that the islands were discovered by the 

 early English navigators, and there seems most reason to 

 assign to Captain William Keeling — after whom the northern 

 atollon is named — the honour of their first finding. 



In 1609 William Keeling, who was a captain in the service 

 of the East India Company, sailed homeward from Bantam, 

 and on this voyage it is supposed that he sighted the islands, 

 and it is certain that his course must have lain close in their 

 neighbourhood. And yet the actual record of their sighting- 

 does not appear to be forthcoming, for no reference was found 

 to it in the account of his voyages : and no more direct 

 evidence than the date of the first charting of the islands, and 

 their name, associates Keeling with their discovery. 



In any case it is probable that Keeling only saw the island 

 that to-day bears his name, and the southern atoll — the Cocos 

 Islands — were the independent discovery of another English 

 navigator, and was made soon after Keeling's finding of the 

 northern atollon. 



Captain William Keeling was a man of some note — anci 

 many virtues — and in Carisbrooke Church in the Isle of 

 Wight a tablet and an inscription bear testimony to his many 

 merits. Keeling is depicted standing upon the deck of a ship, 

 and the tablet witnesses that " Here lyeth the body of the 

 right worthy William Keeling Esquire, Groom of the chamber 

 to our Soverign Lord King James, General for the Hon. East 

 India Adventurers, where he was thrice by them employed, and 

 dying in this Isle, at the age of 42, An. 1619 Sept. 12th, hath 



