KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. N:0 4. 79 



of seeking them; moreover, their situation is not ascortained, for some report them to lie in more degrees 

 than others; neither is their size known, nor the kind of peoj>le inhabiting them, nor even whether 

 they are inhabited or not: and the means wbich the Marquis de Monte Castro has proposed for making 

 this discovery appear impracticable. It is therefore ordered, that no alteration shall be made from 

 the t räck in which the galleons have annually sailed to New Spain. 



It is striking that the fruitless attempts to find the Gold and Silver Islands in the 

 places which were given in the Spanish charts never led to the idea of identifying them 

 with any other islands which these charts placed in other positions, and that during so 

 long a period we do not hear any mention of any attempt to explore the group of islands 

 in which people afterwards believed that they had found the Hawaiian Islands. If these 

 had really been discovered, or if the memory of that discovery had survived from older 

 times, there can scarcely be any doubt that the thirst for gold or the practical advantage 

 of rendering the galleon-traffic safe would have contributed to direct attention to them. 

 But, as has already been said, and as hereafter shall be more fully shown, that part of 

 the ocean where Hawaii is situated, remained unknown until Cook's time. 



Tor the rest of Europé, outside Spain, the discovery of the Gold and Silver Islands 

 had löst all practical interest after the Dutch expeditions. A change in this respect took 

 place when the discovery of the Anson chart re-awakened the belief in their existence. 

 Seamen therefore again began to search for them, but now it was no longer to acquire 

 for themselves their riches, which had already been relegated to the region of sailor's yarns, 

 but to fix their position out of purely scientific interest. After these efforts too had f ailed, 

 the islands enter upon the last stage of their history, when they, so to speak, return from 

 their wandering in the unknown, to be identified with lands that had been previously 

 discovered and named. We shall take up that part of the question when we come to 

 deal with the influence of the older maps on modern voyages of exploration. 



