66 DAHLGREN, THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



and Silver Islands — all of them lands where, according to the legends, the precious 

 metals were to be gathered from the ground and did not need to be laboriously extracted 

 from the interiör of the earth. In spite of their failure, they found it difficult to give 

 up the alluring picture. When they did not find what they sought in the regions which 

 were indicated by the old legends and by the maps based thereon, they hoped for better 

 success in still unexplored regions, and clutched with avidity at every hint that they 

 were here to attain their object. 



The history of geography thus shows us how the Gold and Silver Islands have 

 constantly, so to speak, been wandering towards the East. Marco Polo had long ago 

 spöken, in the most exaggerated language, of the wealth of gold in Zipangu, situated 

 at the extremity of this part of the world, and had thus pointed out where the precious 

 metals should preferably be sought. Martin Behaim, in his celebrated globe of 1492, 

 re vi ved the Argyre of antiquity in these regions, and we see an Auri Insula, north of the 

 Philippines, in a map of the world published in Venice, 1554. 1 Af ter Japan had really been 

 discovered, the most eminent geographer of that age, Gerhard Mercator, believed 

 that he could identify it with Chryse of antiquity; and the sister island Argyre was placed 

 in the vicinity by another cartographer of the time, Abraham Ortelius, although he 

 gives expression to his doubt as to the correctness of the information. 2 



The notion of the richness of Japan in precious metals was kept up by the Portu- 

 guese missionaries and navigatörs, who visited the country about the middle of the 

 sixteenth century: Francis Xavier, the apostle of Japan, says, in a letter of 1552, that 

 the country, owing to its wealth in silver, was named Islas Platareas, and assures his 

 reader, in the course of an attempt to dissuade the Spaniards from expeditions to these 

 regions, that, apart from the Japanese Islands, no other island had been discovered on 

 which there was silver. 3 The reality, however, soon showed little to correspond to these 

 lofty hopes; 4 and at any råte gold and silver could be obtained there only through trade 

 with a people in a high state of civilization and with an orderly government. The country 

 that the sagas had foreshadowed had manifestly not yet been found. Fancy still 

 occupied itself with the idea, however: the Gold and Silver Islands could now be found 

 only in the unknown ocean east of Japan; and here they had a further reason for seeking 

 for them in the importance of finding a refitting place for the galleons on their long and 

 laborious voyage to Mexico. The Spaniards therefore embraced with eagerness the 

 stories spread about time after time which seemed to promise that the longed-f or land had 

 at length been found. 



One of Legazpi's companions, Father Andres de Aguirre, who had accompanied 

 Urdaneta on his return from the Philippines, and had gone with him to Madrid in order 

 to give the King of Spain an account of the new conquest, says that Urdaneta had heard 

 from a Portuguese captain of some islands situated between Japan and America. Aguirre 



1 Remarkable Maps of the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Amst. 1894, I: 3. 



2 "Isla de Platå, Argyra haec forte autiquorum" on the map Maris Pacifici (quod vulgo Mar del Zur) 

 novissima descriptio; see Fig. 9 below. 



3 Monumenta Xaveriana, T. I, Madrid 1899—1900, p. 730. 



4 Cf. Ludwiö Kiess, Die Goldausfuhr ans Japan im 16., 17. and 18. Jahrlmndert (Zeitschrift fur 

 Social- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte, Bd VI, Weimar 1898). 



