120 Letter VI. 
persuade the king of Spain to send him out again as he desired, 
and he died at last in obscurity, without the great wish of his 
heart being accomplished. 
There is, no doubt, some truth at the bottom of this 
rhodomontade of Quiros, when he speaks of the things that he 
actually saw ; for most of his wild writing is about those things 
which he didn’t see. 
Very likely at the time of his visit the people were more 
mixed than they are now, and also their canoes and arts in a 
better condition. This would not only be possible, but reason- 
able ; for there is little doubt but that the natives of Polynesia 
have been and are sinking in the scale of civilization. Also 
the live animals, such as pigs, fowls, goats, of which he speaks, 
very likely were on the island ; for the two former still exist, 
and although I have never heard of goats being originally on 
any of the New Hebrides, still this may have been the case on 
Santo. The gold and silver I am afraid he has coined from his 
own imagination, or, in the case of the former, has been misled 
by the appearance of mica, a mineral which does, I believe, exist 
on Santo. As for the singing-birds, I fancy they are mythical 
altogether ; for the New Hebrides are lamentably deficient in 
this respect. 
Bougainville, who arrived at the New Hebrides in 1768, dis- 
pelled the idea of Santo being a continent ; and Cook sailed 
completely round it, went into the bay in which Quiros had 
anchored, and there found a stream which he supposed to be the 
Jordan of Quiros; but he found no traces of the New 
Jerusalem, which, with its alcaldes, regidores, &c., evidently 
never got further than the fertile brain of its projector. 
Leaving romance, and coming to fact, we find that Santo is 
about eighty miles long by forty miles broad, and is without 
doubt a fine island, What of it could be seen from the vessel 
