206 



DAHLGREN. THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



The constantly fruitless investigations of practical navigatörs could not satisfy the 

 theoretic geographers. They continued to believe in the authority of the Spanish charts, 

 as represented by the Anson chart, and made repeated attempts to reconcile them with 

 what was learnt during the voyages. Such an attempt we see in the map, here reproduced 

 (Fig. 25), which was laid before the Institut de France on 22 Floréal in the year IV (12 

 May 1796) by J. N. Buache, one of the most eminent geographers of the time. In the 

 description 1 annexed to the map the identity between the Los Monges group and Hawaii 

 is accepted; La Pérouse's search for Doria Maria Lajara might have led, it is declared, to 

 better results if it had been extended further to the west; MendanVs »San Francisco is 

 assumed to be the southernmost of the Hawaiian Islands; and if Rica de Oro and Rica 



25. Chart of the Pacific Ocean by J. N. Buache, 1796. 



"Carte réduite de la Partie du Grand Ocean comprise entré le Japon et la Californie, dressée d 'apres les 



Observations de Cook, La Pérouse et autres Navigateurs mödernes." 



de Platå could not be found in the places indicated by the old maps, this was due to the 

 fact that the exploration had not been carried beyond the point where it was broken off 

 by La Pérouse on 22 October 1787. The sure signs of land which were there observed 

 confirmed the existence of an extensive island, and therefore Buache drew on his map, 

 between 185° and 195° E. from Paris, a whole group of islands, whose hypothetical out- 

 lines he borrowed from a Japanese map brought home by Kaempfer, and which, on the 

 strength of the above cited notice from the Philosophical Transactions, he characterizes 



1 Observations sur Vcxistence de quelques isles peu connucs, situées dans la partie du Grand Ocean 

 comprise entré, le Japon et la Californie (Mém. de 1'Institut National des Sciences et Arts. Se. morales et 



polit. T. I, Paris an VI, pp. 475—492). 



