K.T7NGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. N.'0 4- 211 



ha ve laid claim to the island; but it is regularly visited only by the Japanese, who tliere 

 kill the sea-birds and prepare their skins for export to America and Europé for use as 

 trimmings for ladies' hats. 1 



The iminhabited islands north-west of Hawaii — ■ concerning which, as concerning 

 the inhabited ones, there is no information to be found in Spanish sources — have also 

 been fixed as to number and position through modern explorations. In this connection 

 it has been ascertained that Ocean Island, a low atoll in 28° 22' N. lat., 178° 30' W. long., 

 is the last of these islands — the islands marked in many maps north-west of it with the 

 names of Byer or Patrocinio and Moreli Island it has not been possible to find. Ocean 

 Island has become better known than the others of the same group through the shipwrecks 

 which have taken place tliere and the month-long stav of the shipwrecked crews on the 

 island. The difficulties involved in bringing help to those in distress there are shown by the 

 narrative of the U. S. Steamer "Saginaw", Captain Montgomery Sicard, which was löst 

 there on 29 October 1870. A boat sent from there required a month to reach the nearest 

 inhabited land, Kauai; and of its crew all except one man were drowned in the surf in 

 landing on that island. 2 One may conclude from this how small is the probability that 

 better luck would have attended the crew of any Spanish galleon that may possibly have 

 been exposed to a similar fäte. 



Finally, it remains to mention that the region south-east of Hawaii has in recent 

 times attracted the attention of geographers. Here too in accordance with the narratives 

 of whalers, the chart had been peppered with a number of islands of which nothing was 

 known except the unreliable position-statements of the first discoverers. As this part 

 of the ocean lies off the regular lines of communication and is only occasionally visited, 

 it had begun to be regarded as "a doubtful region", within which some fairly large island 

 might possibly be found. The approximate limits of this region were given as 133° — 138° 

 W. long. and 15° — 20° N. lat. by Mr. James D. Hague; 3 and his interest in exploring it 

 had been aroused by the idea that it might be possible there to find the final solution of 

 the problem of the fäte of the U. S. sloop-of-war "Levant", which sailed on 18 September 

 1860 from the port of Hilo, Hawaii, for the port of Panama, and has ne ver since been 

 heard of. Mr. Hague, who had never löst the hope of finding some of the members of this 

 ship's crew still alive, succeeded in bringing it about that, in the year 1904, the U. S. 

 cruiser "Tacoma", Commander R. F. Nicholson, was ordered to search for the missing 

 vessel. The result of this, however, was merely that no land could be seen in any of the 

 places where islands and shoals had been reported. Mr. Hague, who himself took part in 

 the "TacomaV cruise, and who had collected information about earlier voyages in the 

 same region, did not find the result satisfactory: in his opinion a large part of "the doubtful 

 region" remains unexplored. He failed to notice, however, that the Los Monges group 



1 How recklessly the lives of birds are destroyed for this purpose is shown by the statement that of 

 one single species, Sterna fuligmosa, during a single year "no less than 50,000 birds were slaughtered as a 

 sacrifice to the cruel goddess of fashion"; and that another species, Diomedea immutabilis, whose long wing- 

 plumes are known in trade by the name of "eaglc feathers", has been entirely exterminated. Bryan, op. cit., 

 pp. 97, 106. 



2 George H. Read, The last Cruise of the Saginaw, Boston & New York 1912. 



3 A Doubtful Island of the Pacific (The National Geographic Magazine, XV, Wash. 1904, pp. 478 — 489). 



