MIGRATION DRIFT AND ERRATICS. 165 
Roaring Forties, the “labor trade.’’ Merely as museum specimens 
these objects are mute; they are present simply as culture objects found 
anomalously in sites in which ethnographically they are misplaced. 
It is only when it is sought to account for the anomaly that these 
specimens give their testimony of wrong deeds. 
Continuing the examination of Plate VIII, figure d exhibits a pan- 
danus club of the type distinctively Fijian. This was collected by 
Donaldson, a rare authority in this museum, in Ysobel of the central 
Solomons. It seems pity that with a name so glorious in the annals of 
triumphant womankind there should be linked this evidence of a 
thing shameful. That Ysobel thus commemorated in remote geogra- 
phy, Donna Ysobel Berreto, Admiral of Spain and the Indies by royal 
patent, was the wife, she became the widow, of Alvaro Mendafia de 
Neira. He had discovered an unknown land in the west of the great 
ocean and had filled his soul with the delusion that he had found once 
more the islands of Solomon son of David, those gold-studded shores 
from which ships of Tarshish fetched gold and ivory and apes and pea- 
cocks. His vision rested on no ivory nor a single ape nor yet a peacock, 
but he tricked himself into the belief that he had found the gold. Fora 
generation a discredited dreamer of dreams, he haunted the court of the 
viceroy pleading ever in vain for a fleet in which to sail once again to 
claim for his Most Catholic Majesty the fabulous wealth of Tierra 
Australis. At last the viceroy Mendoza, Marques de Cafiete and 
grandee of Spain, issued the grudging permit which allowed Mendafia 
to fit out the ships of his expedition and to sweep the jails from Val- 
paraiso to Callao of the future settlers of the distant lands. With this 
runagate set the expedition fared forth, and with the admiral sailed 
his wife. The voyage halts for a space to discover those nearer islands 
which still bear the commemorative name of the Marquesas and many 
a holy saint, thence with many vicissitudes to the west. The gold they 
missed ; others since their time have sought gold in the Solomons and 
have missed the prize. But in these islands Mendafia died and was 
buried, and to this day none has been able to discover his tomb. Dis- 
sension split the high command. Quiros, piloto mayor, assumed to 
succeed his leader and sailed stormily back to Peru with three of the 
ships. Donna Ysobel aboard the admiral held to her husband’s pur- 
pose; she refused the homeward voyage, and explored the islands in the 
vain search for the mythical gold. At last, her victual all but ex- 
hausted, she tore herself away from the islands in which her husband 
lay buried, and made her way to Manila and back into the known world. 
In the end she discovered in the untried region of the westerly varia- 
bles a new route for the returning galleons back to Acapulco, a priceless 
benefit to the commerce of Spain and of the world. Some time a care- 
ful search of the muniment chambers in Lima or Santiago in the New 
World, or in Seville in the Old World, may bring to light the records 
