36 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
ship. A confused report of this exploit may very well 
have inspired Barlaeus. The statement that the snow- 
clad coast-line imputed to Dirk Gerritsz probably ex- 
tended to the Solomon Islands, is plainly a speculation 
of an armchair geographer, and obviously emanates from 
Barlaeus ; but we have now to follow the mythical coast- 
line to the new land of Ophir, for the centre of interest in 
the first half of the seventeenth century lies there. 
Mendana was accompanied on a second voyage of ex- 
ploration, with which we are not concerned, by a Portu- 
guese pilot named Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who is 
hailed by one authority as the true hero of the unknown 
South Land, and stigmatised by another as a lying 
Munchausen. In any case he was an interesting figure 
and he played a picturesque part in the history of ex- 
ploration. On Mendana’s death, Quiros after a vain 
attempt to get the Peruvian viceroy to provide funds for 
a great expedition to the South Land, went to Spain like 
Columbus, to whom he compared himself, to move the 
King in the matter. He went first to Rome and laid be- 
fore the Pope a touching picture of the untold millions 
of South Land natives ready to be led into the fold of 
the Church ; the Pope recommended him to King Philip 
III., to whom Quiros promised new lands greater in ex- 
tent than those he already possessed and the funds were 
secured. 
Quiros set out from Callao in December, 1605, 
with three ships to explore the coast of the South Land 
from Tierra del Fuego to New Guinea, accompanied by 
six Franciscan missionaries. After encountering much 
bad weather and often changing his course he reached 
a small island in the group, afterwards called the New 
Hebrides, which from its height, its inhabitants and other 
