CHAPTER IV. 



Sailing-Directions and other written information about the Pacific 

 Ocean in the Sixteenth Centnry. 



Now that we have reached the year 1609, we wish to make a short break in the 

 description of the voyages between the Philippines and Mexico. The scattered state- 

 ments that have here been brought together give no hint whatever that, during the period 

 treated, the Spaniards discovered the Hawaiian Islands. The notices are very fragment- 

 ary, it is true, but the absolute silence of the sources tells strongly against the probability 

 of such a discovery: if it had really taken place, could it have passed so unnoticed that 

 it was not regarded as deserving of mention by the side of a number of pieces of informa- 

 tion of far less importance? And there can be no question here of deliberate secrecy, as 

 most of this information is derived from letters and official reports of governors and other 

 officials, intended to come under the eye of the Spanish Government alone; and as a 

 result of this they have remained hidden away in the Spanish archives until our 

 own days. 



But there is also another kind of document which the Spaniards may well be said 

 to have had greater reason to keep secret, and which they actually did seek, to the best 

 of their power, to keep to themselves: I mean the charts and sailing-directions. It is 

 not due to any attempt at secrecy, however, that only a small number of these docu- 

 ments have been preserved till our own time: as they were for the most part intended 

 for practical purposes, they were often worn out by use, or, when they had become anti- 

 quated, were destroyed as useless. The charts will be collectively treated låter (in Chapters 

 x and xi): here we will see whether any conclusions of interest for the question with 

 which we are concerned can be drawn from the old sailing-directions which happen to 

 have been saved from destruction. 



I have already spöken of Urdaneta's instructions for the course that Legazpi's 

 expedition was to take — instructions which we have good reason to regard as representing 

 the state of the geographical knowledge of the northern part of the Pacific Ocean in his 

 time. From the second half of the sixteenth century there are preserved, so far as I know, 

 only two such Derroteros, both published in 1595 by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten in 



