The discovery of the Solomon Islands is credited to Don Alvaro Mendana de Meyer, who went out there in the hope of discovering from whence King Solomon’s wealth came—the supposition was that the islands of the Pacific supplied much of it. That supposition no longer exists.
On sighting the Solomon Islands, and believing them to be the islands he was seeking, he named them Islas de Salomon. This was in the year 1567. After this he thoroughly explored many of them and gave them the names they now bear—Guadalcanar, San Christoval, and Isabel. Whilst thus engaged he decided to found a colony, and with that end in view he returned home and gathered together a number of men anxious to make their fortunes. He returned with them, landed at a place he thought was part of the Solomon Islands, and called it Santa Cruz. The colony was not a success, as most of the immigrants, including the discoverer, died, and the survivors returned to South America.
One of these survivors was De Quiros, who subsequently discovered the New Hebrides.
Bougainville and others, many years afterwards, again came across these islands, and later they were identified as those Mendana de Meyer had {10} discovered and thought were part of the Solomon Islands.
In 1873 the Solomon Islands came into notice through the labour traffic. There was at this time a demand in Queensland for black labour, and traders who visited the islands found that they could kidnap strong, sturdy natives and sell them for good prices to the Queensland and Fiji planters, with the result that, unknown to the Powers, a big and scandalous trade was carried on.
The group consists of seven large islands and no end of small ones, which are dotted about over some 600 miles of sea at a distance of about 400 miles south-east of New Guinea.
Great Britain and Germany shared the islands nearly equally until England ceded Samoa to Germany in exchange for territory in the Solomons. Now Great Britain owns the whole group with the exception of Bougainville and Buka.
The story of the discovery of the New Hebrides is also interesting. It was first sighted by Spanish explorers, De Quiros and Luis Vaez de Torres, who set sail from Peru in two ships to seek the Great Southern Continent, which tradition told them was somewhere in the South Pacific. De Quiros, as before stated, came across the New Hebrides group, {11} striking first one of the largest islands in the northern part of it. This he named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo, thinking possibly it was an enormous tract of land instead of a small island. Fired with ambition and the example of his late confrère, Mendana de Meyer, he also attempted to found a colony there, but, like de Meyer, he had to return with his few survivors and write “failure” across his enterprise.
Luis de Torres left De Quiros at the New Hebrides, and it was then that he sailed through the Torres Straits, which he named and reported on in 1606.
For over a hundred years after the departure of De Quiros from Santo nothing more was heard of the New Hebrides.