KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. NIO 4. 199 



Robert Broughton had no better luck during two attempts to find the island in February 

 and June 1796. 1 And several years låter, on 23 Marcli 1818, a French Captain, Camille 

 de Roqttefeuil, passed the position of the doubtful island Maria Laxara or Lagorta 

 without seeing any sign of land: he adds that the American whalers who had visited 

 these regions for över thirty years did not believe in its existence. 2 



A picture of the western part of the Pacific from the period immediately after Anson 

 is given in a map by the French geographers Jean Nicolas Delisle and Philippe Buache, 

 dated 1750 (Fig. 23). It forms an attempt to combine the Russian discoveries made by 

 Bering, Tchirikow, and Spångberg in the northernmost part of the Ocean with the con- 

 temporary knowledge of the regions nearer the Equator, bounded on the north by Captain 

 de Frondafs track of 1709. We here find, in a faithful copy from the Anson chart, all 

 the islands north and east of the Mariannes, with the addition of two new islands, Saint 

 Antoine and Saint Roch. 



These islands were discovered on 29 April 1709 by Captain de Frondat: one, a 

 quite circnlar, high and peaked island about four leagues in circnmference, received the 

 name af lie Saint Antoine, after Frondafs ship; the other, a lofty rock resembling a 

 ship under sail, was called after the saint of the day, Eocher de Saint Roch. The position 

 of the former was fixed as 30° 23' N. lat., and 162° 24' long. E. from Teneriffe; that of 

 the lätt er as 30° 4' N. lat., and 163° 6' E. long. Neither island could be found by the 

 discoverer in any map accessible to him, and so he considered himself justified in naming 

 them. 3 



It is not at all probable, however, that it was really a new discovery. The rock which 

 Alonso de Arellano saw, in 1565, in 31° lat., and whose height he described in such exagger- 

 ated terms, 4 must certainly be identified with Rocher de S. Roch; and the name Una 

 Coluna, an island which first appears in Plancius' map of 1594 and which afterwards, 

 on 24 March 1599, was seen by William Adams, 5 probably indicates the same rock. The 

 neighbouring island of Dos Colunas ought in that case to be identifiable with St. Antoine, 

 although it is placed by Plancius about 5° south of the position of that island. A number 

 of other islands marked on the Anson chart agree more closely in position with this. If, 

 as is probable, these islands — Todos los Santos, Santo Tomas, San Mateo, and Peha de 

 dos Picos, all quite certainly indicating one and the same island — received their names 

 before Frondat's time, his claim to the honour of discovery will be considerably diminished. 

 As this discovery, however, came to have a certain connection with the above-mentioned 

 Gold and Silver Islands, we wish to trace its history here. 



The islands Saint Antoine and Saint Roch lie on the volcanic rift that extends from 

 Japan in a due southerly direction and which is marked above the surface of the sea by 

 the Shitchito, Bonin, Volcano, and Marianne Archipelagos. In Nolin's map of Frondafs 



1 Broughton, Voyage de décom-crtes dans la partie septentrionale de VOccan Pacifiquc. Traduction. 

 I, Paris 1807, pp 70, 98. 



2 Roquefeuil, Journal d'un vojiagr cmtour dit 3[<mde, II, Paris 1823, p. 3. 



3 I have given an account of the manuscript sources of this discovery in my book De franska sjöftir- 

 derna, pp. 222 et sequ. 



1 See above, p. 38. 



"' Arthur Wichmann, Dirck Gcrritsz. Groningen 1899, p. 33. 



