8 DAHLGREN, THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



general chart], but not the least appearance of land was to be seen. The sickly situation of our 

 people rendered it however absolutely necessary for us to make land as soon as possible; on which 

 account*we lay to in the night-time, and spread during the day; so that (as wewere favoured with 

 fine clear weather, and a steady breeze) it was impossible for us to miss them if they really existed. 

 We stood to the westward between 19° 46' and 20° N. lat., till the 15th, by which time we were 

 considerably to the westward of Los Maj os, but no such islands were to be found. On which I 

 determined to stånd directly for the Sandwich Islands . . - 1 



Captain George Dixon, who sailed with Portlock, and took part in his fruitless 

 search, goes still further, in that he entirely denies the existence of the islands. He says: — 



The Spaniards have discovered land which we now lind to be imaginary. The islands Los Majos, 

 La Maso, and St. Maria la Gorta, laid down by Roberts from 18° 30' to 28° N. lat. and from 135° 

 to 149° W. long. and copied by him from a Spanish MS. chart, were in vain looked for by us, and, to use 

 MaurehVs words, "it may be pronounced that no such islands are to be found"; so that their intention 

 has uniformly been to mislead rather than be of service to future navigatörs. To expatiate on the 

 absurdity, not to call it by a worse name, of such conduct, would be painful . . r 



The charge made in these last words — which, by the bye, is as unfair as its object 

 — is modified by Dixon in his report of the voyage itself: here he limits himself to the 

 statement that the Spanish chart suffered from a grave error, which he assigns to the 

 determination of the longitude, while he assumes as possible that the latitude of the islands 

 whose existence he had previously denied, might be correct. 3 



It might seem as if this assumption would lead one to identify the mysterious 

 islands with Hawaii; but such a conclusion is not drawn by Dixon, or at least he has not 

 expressed it. 



Nor does George Vancouver seem to have entertained any suspicion of such an 

 identity. During his voyage, in January 1793, from Monterey in California to Hawaii 

 he made a careful examination intended to "determine the existence or non-existence of 

 a cluster of islands, described in the Spanish charts as lying between the 221 and 225 

 degrees of E. long." 1 On 3 February 1793, when he was in 224° 2' long. and 19° 53' 

 lat., he no tes: — 



At this juncture we were passing över the position assigned in a chart I had received from Seiior 

 Quadra [at Monterey], to the center of the easternmost of the islands in question. Messrs. Portlock and 

 Dixon also had searched for them to no purpose; but as the track of these navigatörs seemed to have 

 been on the northern side, our's was directed along the southern side of this supposed cluster of 

 islands, until the 6th, when the latitude at noon was observed to be 19° 19', the true longitude 219° 49'. 



But no indication of them, nor of the vicinity of land, was discovered, and there- 

 fore, says Vancouver, "I concluded they could have no existence in the neighbourhood 



1 Ibid., p. 56. Cf. Appendix, p. vij. 



2 Dixon, A Voyage round the World, Lond. 1789. Introd. p. xiv. The quotation from Maurelle does 

 not refer to the islands Los Majos etc. See Journal of a Voyage in 1775 to explorc the Coast of America, 

 Northivard of California, by Don Francisco Antonio Maurelle, in Miscellanies by Daines Barrington, Lond. 

 1781, p. 508. 



3 Dixon, l. c, p. 49. 



4 A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and round the World, Vol. II. Lond. 1798, 

 pp. 105—108. 



