[313] This probably refers to cocoa-nut palms that had been cut for making “toddy,” a practice to be found amongst the natives of the Line Islands at the present day.
[314] An Indian name for a drink prepared from maize.
Figueroa, in his scanty account, neither gives the name nor the latitude of this discovery, so that previous writers, who derived their information entirely from this source, were unable to identify these islands with those in the charts. However, with the materials afforded to me by the journal of Gallego, I have been able, after carefully following the track of the Spanish ships, to identify this discovery with the Musquillo Islands in the Ralick Chain of the Marshall Group. Having followed their course northward from the vicinity of the Gilbert Group, to which I referred above ([page 237]), it was evident that they were about to pass through the Marshall Islands, and that if they should sight land, I had only to compare the description of Gallego with the present [chart] of this group, in order to identify this discovery with one of the atolls that there exist. (Vide [Note XII.] of the Geographical Appendix.)
Continuing their course to the northward, they began to get short of water, and the people sickened and . . . . .[315] On the 22nd of September, they attained the latitude of 111⁄2°, and running due north along the meridian, they reached the latitude of 191⁄3° on October 2nd, when they discovered “a low islet enclosing the sea after the manner of a fishing-net, and surrounded by reefs.” “We were hove-to all that night,” . . . writes Gallego, . . . “believing that it was inhabited, and that we should be able to obtain water. But there were only sea-birds living on it; and its surface was sandy with some patches of bushes. It is probably two leagues in circuit: and is in latitude 191⁄3° north of the Equinoctial. As it was the Day of San Francisco, we named it the Isle of San Francisco.”
[315] “Murieron hartos.” To avoid falling into a serious mistake, I have not translated this, more especially as Figueroa refers to no deaths on board during the voyage to Peru.
This island of San Francisco has not been identified by previous writers with any island in the present [chart], as Figueroa supplied them with the latitude alone, but gave no reliable account from which they might be able to follow the previous track; nor, in fact, in the times of Burney and Krusenstern, who were the last to devote any considerable attention to the discoveries of Mendana, was this part of the Pacific sufficiently well known to enable even a confident surmise to be made. Commodore Wilkes, amongst others, has swept more than one phantom-island from this region. The track of the Spanish ships northward from the Marshall Group brought them, in fact, to a little coral-atoll, named Wake’s Island in the present [chart], and lying in 19° 10′ 54″ N. lat. This is the Isle of San Francisco, which is but little altered in appearance in our own day.[316]
[316] Vide [Note XIII.] of the Geographical Appendix for further information on this subject.
Keeping the same northerly course, they passed the limit of the tropic of Cancer on October 7th; and in another week they had reached the latitude of 30°. They now shaped their course north-east; and Gallego consulted the other pilots as to the position of the land, and as to the bearing of the Cabo de Fortunas[317] (Cape Fortune). “They told me in reply,” . . . . as the Chief Pilot informs us, . . . . “that we were already in the vicinity of land, that this cape lay, in their opinion, 70 or 80 leagues to the north-by-west, that we were much to leeward of the land, that it was not practicable to reach the cape with this wind as the coast trended north-west and south-east, and that we could not live unless we fell in with the land.”
[317] This cape is evidently referred to as on the Californian coast; I cannot identify it.
Could the Spaniards have known at this time what lay before them, the bravest heart amongst them would have quailed. Instead of being in the neighbourhood of the Californian coast whither they were steering, they had more than 3,000 miles of ocean to traverse and two long dreary months to struggle through, before they were fated to sight the land. They were destined to pass through storms, the like of which Gallego had never witnessed during his 45 years’ experience of the sea. The two ships were to be parted; and each was to pursue its solitary way in the fear that the missing ship had foundered. Such was the lot before them with sickness already amongst them, and with a failing store of water and provisions.