PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
183 
were all of the same nature and formation as those already described, CHAP, 
^•nd furnished us with no additional information beyond the correct , ^ 
determination of their size and position ; which, with some remarks Feb- 
that may be useful to navigation, will be given in the appendix. 
Among the number there were two which were previously unknown ; 
the largest of these, which was also the most extensive of our discoveries 
in the archipelago, I named Melville Island, in honour of the first lord 
of the Admiralty ; and the other, Croker Island, in compliment to the 
J’ight honourable secretary. 
The discoveries of Cook and Wallis in this track are relatively 
correctly placed ; but those of the latter are as much as forty miles in 
error in longitude, and several miles in latitude, which has occasioned 
two of them to be mistaken for each other by Bellinghausen, and one 
to be considered as a new discovery by Captain Duperrey. It would 
not have been easy to detect these errors, had we not visited the dis- 
coveries of Wallis in succession, beginning with Whitsunday and Queen 
Charlotte’s Islands, which are so situated that no mistake in them could 
possibly occur. Moreover, we always searched the vicinity narrowly for 
the existence of other islands. 
The mistakes have arisen from placing too much confidence in 
the longitude of the early navigator. The true place of Cumberland 
Island lying much nearer the alleged position of Wallis’s Prince William- 
Ilenry Island than any other, has occasioned Bellinghausen’s mistake ; 
and the true position of Prince William-Henry being so remote from any 
cf \Vallis’s discoveries, as placed by himself, has made Captain Duperrey 
think the one which he saw could not possibly be one of them, and he 
in consequence bestowed upon it the new name of L’Ostange. 
There can be no doubt that the island which I consider Prince 
William-Henry Island is the L’Ostange of Captain Duperrey, as we 
an opportunity of comparing longitudes with him at Moller Island ; 
and it is equally certain that this island is the same with that discovered 
% Wallis, as its distance from Queen Charlotte’s Island and his other 
‘iiscoveries to the eastward, each of which we visited, exactly coincides. 
Wallis has certainly erred ten miles in latitude, but it should be recol- 
lected that the position of the island was fixed by reckoning from noon, 
