50 DAHLGREN, THE DISOOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



by lus presence in Acapulco in December of the latter year. The Viceroy of Mexico had 

 at that time the intention of malung use of his vessel for the next year's consignment 

 to the Philippines; but he gave up this plan when it proved that the galleon "Santiago", 

 contrary to expectation, could be repaired in time, and also because, as he says in a letter 

 of 23 December 1590, "neither Juan da Gama's or Baltasar Rodriguez's ship seemed to 

 be fit for the voyage or to possess sufficient speed and conveniences toconvey theKing's 

 commands and monies". Juan da Garna, however, achieved the voyage, though not in 

 an official capacity. The Governor Dasmarinas, in a letter to the King of 31 May 1592, 

 writes that inasmuch as, on his arrival at Manila, he had found the arsenals completely 

 destitute of powder, saltpetre and other ammunition, he had sent a ship to Macao to 

 fetch the necessary supplies; but both ship, crew, and money had there been confiscated. 

 Afterwards, when the Governor learnt that they intended to send his ship to the East 

 Indies, and that the Spaniards in Macao were treated as badly as if they had been the 

 enemies of the Portuguese, — Juan da Garna' s vessel came into Manila. It was richly 

 laden with silver which had been received in exchange for the goods exported from China 

 to Mexico; and the Governor did not hesitate to seize this money as Portuguese property 

 as a pledge for the ship which had been sequestrated in Macao. The latter was now 

 released and arrived at Manila in March 1592. 



Nothing further is known about Juan da Gama, but his name låter became connected 

 with the discovery of a land that has played no insignificant part in the historjr of geo- 

 graphy. In a map by the Portuguese cosmographer JoÄo Teixeira, drawn at Lisbon 

 in 1649 and published in 1664 by Melchisedech Thevenot, 1 there is to be seen to the 

 north-east of Yeso an island distinguished by the legend Terra que uio Do Joäo da garna 

 indo, da China pera Noua Espanha — "land that Dom Joäo da Gama saw during his 

 voyage from China to New Spain". This Gama-land — concerning which contemporary 

 Spaniards have nothing to tell us, presumably because the supposed discovery was 

 kept secret by their competitors, the Portuguese — became, during the eighteenth 

 century, the object of all sorts of speculations on the part of geographers: some considered it 

 to be the same island (one of the Kurile Islands) as that to which the Dutchman Martin 

 Gerritsz. Vries had given the name of Compagnies Land in 1643; others supposed that it 

 was a part of the west coast of America; and others again went still further and put for- 

 ward the böld hypothesis that Gama-land had been destroyed by an earthquake and 

 broken up into several smaller islands. Meanwhile this land had been marked on the 

 maps with different shapes and situations, and grew, through a series of misunderstand- 

 ings, to such an extent that finally (in 1753) it came to figure as an archipelago stretching, 

 in 45° N. lat., eastwards from Japan to a length of not less than 13 degrees of longitude; 

 and, despite the fact that Vitus Bering had in vain sought for Gama-land as early as 1741, 

 it was still retained on the maps, from which it was not definitively removed until the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century. Concerning the identity of the discoverer and the 

 time of the discovery, however, complete ignorance prevailed. We can now give a place 

 for this discovery in the history of the maritime intercourse between Asia and America, 



Relations de divers voyages curieux, P. I, Paris 1666. 



