36 DAHLGREN, THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



what altitude they had observed, t hen they amended their reckonings somewhat: those who had 

 made these reckonings rather large, cut them down, and those who proved to have counted too low, 

 increased the distances, and in consequence of this, if the General had not been in the habit of co- 

 a (ljusting the estimates of the pilots, the error in these would have been far greater than it was at the 

 beginning of the voyage. At any råte it seems as if they had all exaggerated the distance sailed. The 

 man who restricted himself most was Father Andres de Urdaneta, and therefore his forecasts proved 

 the most correct Avhen he said that land was near, whether he cut down most or, when he saw t hat all 

 the pilots were before him in the reckoning, this caused him to increase slightly the distances so that 

 the difference from the opinion of the others should not be too great. 



The result of all this uncertainty was, that after some days, the pilots agreed that 

 they had already sailed past Los Reyes 1 and Corales. They therefore steered up towards 

 10° in order at least not to miss the islands Arrecifes and Matalotes. On 9 January 1565, 

 however, they came across an island, which they called Barbudos, probably the same as 

 Villalobos' Los Reyes, and shortly afterwards some other islands which received the names 

 of Islas de los Plazeles, 2 de Pajaros and de las Hermanas, all nndoubtedly belonging to 

 the Caroline Islands. 3 



The discussion as to where they were was resnmed when, on 14 January, they again 

 came in sight of land. Urdaneta considered that it was the islands that Villalobos had 

 discovered and called Los Jardines; but the pilots laughed at this and maintained that 

 they had got far past them: some said that they were in the neighbourhood of the 

 Philippines, others that the islands in sight were the Matalotes. Some days låter, as the 

 question could not be solved, Legazpi summoned to a meeting on his ship all the captains 

 and pilots of the fleet as well as the religious; and all agreed that they ought to steer up 

 to 13° in order to avoid the regions where Villalobos had encountered so many misfor- 

 tunes. In this opinion Urdaneta agreed the more heartily because, if his surmises were 

 correct, they could not in this latitude miss the Ladrones, from which they could steer a 

 sure course to the Philippines. Although this supposition also aroused the ridicule of 

 the pilots, events proved that he was right when, on 22 January 1565, they arrived at 

 the island of Guam. Legazpi's further fortunes lie outside the scope of this treatise. 



Legazpi' s voyage, as regards that part of it which has here been summarized, has for 

 our present subject no other interest than as a further evidence that Hawaii was unknown 

 to the Spaniards at that time; but it could not be ignored for the simple reason that it can 

 be characterized as epoch-making in the history of the navigation of the Pacific Ocean. 



All the voyages that had so far been undertaken had proceeded from east to west: 

 every attempt that had been made to cross the ocean in the other direction had failed. 

 As it was now proposed to found a colony in the Philippines, it was clearly an essential 



1 "Påse esta manana (28 Dec.) å las seis öras la isla de los Reies sin verla y påse en baxo della un 

 tercio de grado por que esta ella en nueve grados." An unpublished "Derrotero de Pierres Plun, piloto frances". 

 (Arch. de Indias. Est. 1. Caj. 1. Leg. ./.>, Kamo 16.) 



2 "Islas de San Pedro y San Pablo", according to Pierre Plun. 



3 Little sketches of these islands are inserted in an unpublished ''Relaciön y derrotero de Estevan 

 Kodriguez, piloto mayor... del viaje y jornada de las yslas Phelipinas" (Archivo de Indias. Est. 1. Caj. 1. Leg. 

 ,1. Ramo 16). For information as regards this narrative, and also about several other original documents in 

 Seville and Madrid, lam indebted to Dr. Bruno Rolf, who visited Portugal and Spain in 1912 for the pur- 

 pose of studying the magnetic observations of former days. 



