60 DAHLGREN, THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



his work Reys-Gheschrift van de Navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten. In one of these 

 (chap. 50) is described tlie voyage from Macao in China to New Spain; in the second 

 (chap. 51 ) the voyage from Manila to Acapulco and the return-route from there to the 

 Philippines. "We need not reproduce the details of the course with the minute statements 

 as to the direction of the winds, etc. : for our purpose it is enough to state that the ship, 

 after reaching the latitude of Japan on a course mostly NE. from the starting-point, is to 

 steer due east. and that no land is spöken of in the long rim, estimated at 1700 leagues, 

 between there and the coast of New Spain, which ought to be made in 35° lat., or at the 

 worst in 38° or 40° lat. As regards the return-route from Acapulco, it is said expressly 

 that one has to sail due west with a constant wind "without seeing or coming across any 

 land". 



The object of Linschoten was manifestly to give his fellow-countrymen, the Dutch, 

 information as to the trade-ways on which they could appear as competitors to the 

 Spaniards and Portuguese, who had hitherto dominated the seas, and who were now united 

 in one empire; and lie had collected material for his work during a long residence in Goa, 

 from where he had returned to Holland in 1592. Neither for him, nor for his Portuguese 

 informers, was there any reason to conceal what they knew about the discoveries of the 

 Spaniards. And if it should be objected that they were not fully informed about these 

 discoveries, we may cite definite utterances on the part of the Spaniards. 



Tims, for instance, Urdaneta's friend and companion, Father Andres de Aguirre, 

 says (1584 or 1585) that no land existed in the run of 2000 leagues between the coast of 

 New Spain and China. 1 Another authority who deserves to be, cited, is Antonio de 

 Herrera, who, as official Spanish Historiographer (Coronista Mayor de Su Magestad 

 de las Indias y su coronista de Castilla), had unrestricted access to all the archives of the 

 country, and made an extensive use of their contents for the history that he compiled 

 under the orders of the Council of the Indies. He too gives a short description of the 

 navigation, in both directions, between Acapulco and the Philippines; 2 but he also gives a 

 list of all the islands in this part of the Ocean. After he has dwelt in some detail on the 

 Ladrones, he continues: — 



Between these islands and the Phihppines there are eighteen or twenty other islands which are 

 called los Reyes, Gorall Islands, and another group of islands los Jardines, also Pialogo, San Vilan, 

 which is a little island near los Jardines, and Matalotes, and Arracifes, and San Juan or Palm Island 

 in the neighbourhood of the Moluccas. North of the Ladrones lie five or six small islands, quite close 

 to one another, which are called Volcanes, where there is a great deal of cochineal, and another little 

 island Malpélo, on which there is fine cinnamon. 3 East of the Ladrones lie Dos Hermanas, two small 

 islands in 10°, and San Bartolomé in 14°, and nearer New Spain the banks Miracomovas, Quitesueno 

 or Catanoduermas, and in the neighbourhood of these the islands San Martin and San Pablo, a little 



1 Coleccién de docum. ined., XIII, p. 546. 



2 Descripciön de las Indias Occidentales, Madrid 1601, p. 6. — A descriptiou closely agreeing with 

 Herrera's is to be found in the National Library at Madrid (Cod. J. 15); this has been published in Coleccién 

 de documentos incditos rel. al descubrimiento . . . de America y Oceania, XV, 1871, pp. 409 et sequ. This 

 seems to be either an older version of Herrera's own account, or more probably the work of one of his pre- 

 decessors, which he for the most part copied word for word. In the extracts cited above the differences between 

 the two works are quite trivial. 



3 This information about the products of the islands is, of course, completely incorrect. 



