522 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP, is a yet wider discrepancy ; ports are placed in the Japanese map where 
none exist in these ; rocks are marked to the full number, which seem 
June, only to create useless alarm to the navigator ; and throughout there is 
a neglect of the cardinal points. I have therefore, on this ground, pre- 
sumed to doubt the propriety of the name of Bonin-sima being attached 
to these islands. 
Were the situation of Bonin-sima dependent solely upon the 
account furnished by Kaempfer, it might safely be identified with the 
group ofYslas del Arzobispo ; but the recent notice of that island by 
the Japanese authors is so very explicit, that great doubt upon the 
subject is thereby created. Kaempfer’s account stands thus: — In 1675 
a Japanese junk was driven out of her course by strong winds, and 
wrecked upon an island three hundred miles to the eastward of 
Fatsisio. The island abounded in arrack-trees (areca ?) and in enor- 
mous crabs (turtle ?), which were from four to six feet in length ; and 
was named Bune-sima, in consequence of its being uninhabited. In 
this statement the distance, the areca-trees, the turtle, and the island 
being unoccupied agree very well with the description of the island 
I have given above ; and it is curious that Wittrein, whom we found 
upon the island, declared he had seen the wreck of a vessel in which 
the planks were put together in a manner similar to that which was 
noticed by Lieutenant Wain wright in the junk at Loo Choo. 
It is remarkable that this group should have escaped the observa- 
tion of Gore, Perouse, Krusenstern, and several others, whose vessels 
passed to the northward and southward of its position. In the journals 
of the above-mentioned navigators we find that when in their neigh- 
bourhood they were visited by land-birds ; but that they never saw 
land, except the three small islands of Los Volcanos, which may be 
considered the last of the group. The consequence of its having thus 
escaped notice was, that all the islands, except the three last-mentioned, 
were expunged from the charts ; and it was not until 1823 that they re- 
appeared on Arrowsmith’s map, on the authority of M. Abel Bemusat. 
In the vicinity of these islands we found strong currents, running 
principally to the northward ; but none of them equalled in strength 
that which is said by the Japanese to exist between Bonin-sima and 
