The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

In August, 1766, another expedition consisting of two ships, the “Dolphin,” and the “Swallow,” under the command of Captain Wallis, and Captain Carteret, sailed from Plymouth with the object of making further discoveries in the southern hemisphere. After a stormy passage through the Straits of Magellan, the two ships were separated just as they were entering the South Sea. This accidental circumstance proved fortunate in its results for geographical science, as each vessel steered an independent course. Whilst Captain Wallis in the “Dolphin” was exploring the coasts of Tahiti, Captain Carteret in the “Swallow” followed a track more to the southward, and ultimately brought back to Europe tidings of the long lost lands of Mendana and Quiros. In July, 1767, Captain Carteret being in 167° W. long, and 10° S. lat., kept his course westward in the same parallel “in hopes”—as he remarks—“to have fallen in with some of the islands called Solomon’s Islands.” After reaching the meridian of 177° 30′ E. long. in 10° 18′ S. lat., a position five degrees to the westward of that assigned to the Solomon Islands in his chart, Captain Carteret came to the conclusion “that if there were any such islands their situation was erroneously laid down.” He was afterwards destined to discover, unknown to himself, nearly a thousand miles to the westward, the very group whose existence he doubted. Continuing his westerly course, he arrived at a group of islands, the largest of which he recognised as the Santa Cruz of Mendana, which had not been visited by Europeans since the disastrous attempt to found a Spanish Colony there more than 170 years before. With a crazy ship, and a sickly crew, Captain Carteret desisted from the further prosecution of his discoveries in those regions; and shaping his course W.N.W., he sighted in the evening of the second day a low flat island, one of the outlying islands of the Solomon Group, which, without suspecting the nature of his discovery, he called Gower Island, a name still preserved in the present [chart].[363] During the night, the current carried him to the south, and brought him within sight of what he thought were two other large islands lying east and west with each other, which he named Simpson’s Island, and Carteret’s Island. Captain Carteret communicated with the natives, but did not anchor. These two islands have proved to be the forked northern extremity of the large island of Malaita. Keeping to the north-west, he subsequently discovered, off the north-west end of the group, a large atoll with nine small islands, which are known as the Nine Islands of Carteret. On the following morning he was fated, without being aware of it, to get another glimpse of the Solomon Islands. A high island, descried by him to the southward, which is named Winchelsea Island in his text, and Anson Island in his chart of the voyage, was in all probability the island of Bouka visited nearly a year afterwards by Bougainville, the French navigator. Thus the missing group was at length found, but without the knowledge of the English navigator who discovered it. He had, in truth, expected to find it 20° further to the east. It was reserved, however, for the geographer in his study to identify the discoveries of Carteret with the Isles of Salomon of Mendana.

[363] Captain Carteret communicated with the natives, but did not anchor.

At the end of June, 1768, Bougainville the French navigator,[364] coming northward from his discovery of the Louisiade Archipelago and of the Australia del Espiritu Santo of Quiros, made the west coast of a large island, now known as Choiseul Island, one of the Solomon Islands. When the ships were about twenty miles south of the present Choiseul Bay, boats were sent to look for an anchorage, but they found the coast almost inaccessible. A second attempt was made to find an anchorage in Choiseul Bay, but, night coming on, the number of the shoals and the irregularity of the currents prevented the ships from coming up to the anchorage. In this bay the boats were attacked by about 150 natives in ten canoes who were dispersed and routed by the second discharge of fire-arms. Two canoes were captured, in one of which was found the jaw of a man half broiled. The island was named Choiseul by its discoverer, and a river from which the natives had issued into the bay was called “la riviere des Guerriers.” Passing through the strait which bears his name, the French navigator coasted along the east side of Bougainville Island, and passed off the island of Bouka. The natives who came off to the ship in their canoes displayed the cocoa-nuts they had brought with them, and constantly repeated the cry, “bouca, bouca, onellé.” For this reason, Bougainville named the island, Bouca, which is the name it still retains on the [chart]. It is, however, evident from the narrative that the French navigator never regarded this name as that by which the island was known to its inhabitants. When Dentrecasteaux, during his voyage in search of La Pérouse, lay off this island in his ships in 1792, the natives who came off from the shore, as Labillardière informs us,[365] made use of the same expression of “bouka.” This eminent naturalist considered that the word in question was a term in the language of these islanders; and he refers to it as a Malay expression of negation, except when a pause is made on the first syllable when it signifies “to open.” On leaving behind him the island of Bouka, Bougainville quitted the Solomon Group; but from his account it is apparent that he had no idea of having found the missing archipelago. Referring to these islands in the introduction to his narrative, he writes:—“supposing that the details related of the wealth of these islands are not fabulous, we are in ignorance of their situation, and subsequent attempts to find them have been in vain. It merely appears that they do not lie between the eighth and twelfth parallels of south latitude.” In Bougainville’s plans and charts, these discoveries are referred to as forming part of the Louisiade Archipelago which he had found to the southward. In the general chart showing the track of his voyage, the Solomon Islands are placed about 350 miles north-west of the Navigator Islands; and they are there referred to as “Isles Salomon dont l’existence et la position sont douteuse.”

[364] “Voyage autour du Monde en 1766-1769:” second edit, augmentée: Paris 1772.

[365] Labillardière’s “Voyage a la recherche de la Pérouse:” Paris 1800: tome I., p. 227.

In June of the following year, 1769, there sailed from Pondicherry an expedition commanded by M. de Surville,[366] who was bound on some enterprise with the object of which we are still to a great extent unacquainted. It is, however, probable as we learn from Abbé Rochon,[367] that some rumour of an island abounding in wealth and inhabited by Jews, which was reported to have been lately seen by the English seven hundred leagues west of Peru, had led to the fitting out of this expedition. Not unlikely, stories of the wealth of the missing islands of Mendana had been revived by the arrival in India of some ship that had come upon them in her track across the Pacific; and the reference to their being populated by Jews may be readily understood when I allude to the fact that the form of the nose in one out of every five Solomon Islanders, and in truth in many Papuans, gives the face quite a Jewish cast. In October, 1769, Surville discovered and named Port Praslin on the north-east coast of Isabel, which was the same island of the Solomon Group that Mendana had first discovered two hundred years before. Here he stayed eight days, during which time his watering-parties came into lamentable conflict with the natives. Sailing eastward from Port Praslin, he sighted the Gower Island of Carteret, which he named Inattendue Island. Subsequently he reached Ulaua, which he called, on account of the unfavourable weather which he experienced in its vicinity, Ile de Contrarieté. The attempt to send a boat ashore was the occasion of another unfortunate affray with the natives, who were ultimately dispersed with grape-shot. It will be remembered that just two centuries before, the Spaniards in the brigantine came into conflict with these same islanders, and that they named their island La Treguada in consequence of their supposed treachery (vide [anteâ]). In the neighbourhood of Contrarieté, Surville sighted three small islands, which he named Les Trois Sœurs (Las Tres Marias of the Spaniards), and near them another island, which he called Ile du Golfe, the Ugi or Gulf Island of the present [chart]. Sailing eastward, he apprehended from the trend of the neighbouring St. Christoval coast that he would become embayed; but his apprehensions were removed when he arrived at the extremity of this land, which he named Cape Oriental, and the two off-lying small islands of Santa Anna and Santa Catalina were called Iles de la Délivrance in token of the danger from which he had apparently been delivered. In total ignorance of the fact that he had been cruising amongst the islands of the lost archipelago of Mendana, Surville now directed his course for New Zealand; and on account of sanguinary conflicts with the natives of Port Praslin and Contrarieté, he named his discoveries Terre des Arsacides or Land of the Assassins.

[366] An account of this expedition is given in Fleurieu’s “Discoveries of the French in 1768 and 1769 to the south-east of New Guinea:” London, 1791.

[367] “Voyages à Madagascar et aux Indes Orientales:” Paris, 1791.

In 1781, Maurelle, the Spanish navigator, in command of the frigate “Princesa,” during his voyage from Manilla to San Blas on the west coast of Mexico,[368] came upon the Candelaria Shoals of Mendana, which lie off the north coast of Isabel Island. I have shown on [page 200] that these Candelaria Shoals are no other than the Ontong Java of Tasman, which was identified by M. Fleurieu[369] with the discovery of Maurelle. To the south-east of these shoals the “Princesa” approached another, which on account of the roaring of the sea was named El Roncador: this has been erroneously identified with the Candelaria Shoals by M. Fleurieu, and it is so named on the present Admiralty [charts]. Thus it nearly fell to the lot of the Spanish nation to be amongst the first to find the group they had originally discovered; but Maurelle was not acquainted with his vicinity to the missing Isles of Salomon, and turning the head of his ship eastward, he proceeded on his voyage.

[368] An account of this voyage is given in “Voyage de la Pérouse autour du Monde,” par Milet-Mureau: London, 1799: vol. I., p. 201.