234 SANTA CRUZ. 
1566. The night before the expedition sighted land the Almiranta, 
the fourth ship of the squadron, disappeared, being wrecked possibly 
on one of the Reef Islands or on the Duff Group, 95 miles northeast 
of Santa Cruz. Mendana made a settlement in a bay at the north- 
east end of the island, which he named Graciosa Bay. Here the expe- 
dition stayed for two months, their ranks being gradually thinned by 
disease and by the arrows of the natives. Mendana died and was 
buried at Santa Cruz. The rest of the company abandoned their 
ideas of colonization and set out for Manila, just failing to sight the 
Solomons when two days’ sail from Santa Cruz. 
The Swallow Group was discovered and named by Carteret in 1766 
after his ship, the Swallow. The Duff Group, Taumako, was named 
after the mission ship of the London Missionary Society, the Duff, 
which sighted them when on a voyage returning from Tahiti in 1797. 
The fate of La Pérouse was discovered by Dillon, who landed at Van- 
ikolo in 1826. 
The Santa Cruz Group lies to the east of the Solomons, and the 
large island Ndeni, which Mendana named Santa Cruz, is 200 miles 
from Ulawa and a little less from Santa Anna, the small island at the 
southern extremity of San Cristoval. Ndeni is 22 miles long and 10 
or 12 miles broad. Like most of the Melanesian islands, there is but 
little flat land on it; the center ridge rises to a height of 2,000 feet and 
the ridges which offset from it terminate right on the coast. The whole 
island is covered with the usual dense vegetation. ‘The climate is 
wet and steamy and very trying to Europeans. ‘The average number 
of days on which rain falls is probably in excess of the number of rainy 
days in the Solomons, which Dr. Guppy reckons as about 180. ‘There 
seem to be hardly any bush villages at all, the population living in 
large villages on the shore. Graciosa Bay in particular, a deep inden- 
tation at the north end, has a large number of populous villages. ‘The 
total population may be 8,000, but numbers died of dysentery in 1915. 
Agriculture 1s followed to some extent, yams, and what are known 
in the Solomons as “‘pana,”’ being grown. ‘The “‘pana”’ is a yam that 
has a prickly vine. Coconuts are comparatively few in number, but 
Santa Cruz is renowned for its large canarium nut (almond). ‘These 
are smoked and preserved in leg-of-mutton-shaped baskets plaited 
out of a coconut leaf. These baskets of nuts are brought off to the 
ships for trade, but the Cruzians are quite capable of filling them with 
rubbish and then palming them off on the unwary. 
The weapons of the peoples in all the islands of the group are bows 
and arrows. The bow is made of very tough wood, is of great 
length, and exceedingly hard to bend. ‘The bowstring is twisted out 
of fiber made from the bark of a garden tree which in Ulawa is called 
su‘a. The su‘a tree has berries of the size and appearance of coffee 
berries. ‘These are boiled in wooden bowls by means of placing hot 
