CHAPTER XII
THE STORY OF A LOST ARCHIPELAGO.
The most interesting feature in the history of the discovery of the Solomon Group is the circumstance that during a period of two hundred years after it was first discovered by the Spaniards it was lost to the world and its very existence doubted. In the belief that I shall be treading on ground new to the general reader, I will at once pass on to relate how this large archipelago was lost and found again.
Fancied discoveries of the precious metals in the island of Guadalcanar inflamed the imaginations of the Spaniards: and the reports, which they gave on their return to Peru, in 1568, of the wealth and fertility of the newly-found lands, cast a glamour of romance over the scene of their discoveries which the lapse of three hundred years has not been able altogether to remove.
To colonize his new discovery and add one more to the vast possessions of Spain, became the life-long ambition of Mendana. In order to further his great aim, he gave to these islands the name of the “Isles of Salomon,” to the end that the Spaniards, supposing them to be the islands whence Solomon obtained his gold for the temple at Jerusalem, might be induced to go and inhabit them. Thus, the name of the new discovery was itself a “pious fraud,” if we may believe the story of Lopez Vaz,[333] a Portuguese, who was captured by the English, nearly twenty years afterwards, at the River Plate. This seems to me to be the explanation of the name, which we ought, in fairness, to receive; since, after reading the narrative of Gallego, it is scarcely crediting the Spaniards with ordinary reasoning faculties to imagine that Mendana and his officers really thought that they had found the Ophir of Solomon.
[333] “Purchas, his Pilgrimes,” Part IV., Lib. VII.
However, many years rolled by; and Mendana had arrived at an elderly age before any further undertaking was attempted. The appearance of Drake in the South Sea, some years after the return of the expedition to Peru, caused the scheme of colonization to be abandoned. The Spaniards now found a rival in the navigation of that ocean which, under the sanction of a Papal decree, they had hitherto regarded as exclusively their own. The dread that they would be unable to hold the “Isles of Salomon” against the attacks of the powerful nation now intruding in their domain, caused them to relinquish the coveted islands; and “commandement was given, that they should not be inhabited, to the end that such Englishmen, and of other Nations as passed the Straits of Magellan to go to the Malucos (Moluccas), might have no succour there, but such as they got of the Indian people.”[334] To prevent the English obtaining any knowledge of these islands, the publication of the official narrative of Mendana’s voyage was purposely delayed. So strong a pressure was brought to bear upon Gallego, the Chief-Pilot of the expedition,[335] that he was afraid to publish his journal, which has not only remained in manuscript up to the present day, but was not brought to light until the second quarter of the present century. Thus, it happened that for nearly half-a-century after the return of Mendana, there was no account of the expedition:[336] no chart preserved its discoveries, it being considered better, as things were then, to let these islands remain unknown.[337]
[334] “History of Lopez Vaz: Purchas, his Pilgrimes,” Part IV., Lib. VII.
[335] Vide prologue to “Gallego’s Journal,” [page 194].
[336] Vide [page 192].
[337] Letter from Quiros to Don Antonio de Morga, Governor of the Philippines.