CHAPTER X. 

 The Cartograpliical Evidences. 



A. Maps printed in Europé. 



If the result of the above investigation was definitive, if our researches definitely 

 established tliat no European before Cook had sighted the Hawaiian Archipelago, this 

 work could be concluded here with the declaration that the other arguments that had been 

 adduced as evidence for the Spanish discovery did not deserve examination. But the 

 gaps in our knowledge of the voyages in the Pacific compel us to a review of these other 

 arguments also; and we now proceed to the most import ant of them, viz. the evidence 

 of the maps. 



Though, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, various things have been said 

 either in order to trace back the supposed discovery to a certain person or to a certain 

 time, or to show traces of such a discovery either in Hawaii itself or in its inhabitants, vet 

 it is evident that those who have seriously occupied themselves with the question have 

 regarded all these as merely subsidiary reasons, while it has been alleged as a fundamental 

 fact that old Spanish charts represent a group of islands whose identity with the Hawaiian 

 Islands cannot be doubted. If this assertion were correct, it would of course greatly en- 

 hance the importance of the hypotheses whose value we have above sought to minimize, 

 without being able to reject them altogether. If, on the other hand, — as I think I am 

 able to demonstrate — the cartographical evidences rest on entirely incorrect presuppo- 

 sitions, the import of these hypotheses is reduced to such a very small degree of pro- 

 bability, that the theory of the Spanish discovery of Hawaii could be definitely ejected 

 from the history of geographical discovery. 



When the allegation that James Cook could not rightly claim to be regarded as the 

 first discoverer of Hawaii was put forward for the first time, stress was laid on the Chart 

 which George Anson found on the Spanish galleon that he captured in 1743, and a copy 

 of which was appended to the narrative of his voyage round the world (Pl. III). As the 

 editor of the narrative savs, this chart shows the whole of the ocean between the 



