The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

[375] “Voyage de la Pérouse,” rédigé par M. L. A. Milet-Mureau; London, 1799.

[376] Carlyle’s “French Revolution,” ch. V., p. 37.

The ominous silence that had fallen over the doings of the absent expedition, on account of the non-arrival of the long expected dispatches, must have been, in a double sense, a cause of disappointment to M. Fleurieu, who had hoped to demonstrate the correctness of the views of the French geographers by the results of the explorations of La Pérouse. It was with the object of showing that the New Georgia of Shortland was one and the same with the Terre des Arsacides of Surville and the Choiseul of Bougainville, and that the French and English navigators had independently of each other discovered the lost Solomon Group, that M. Fleurieu published in Paris in 1790 his “Découvertes des François en 1768 et 1769 dans le sud-est de la Nouvelle Guinée.”[377] “The desire of restoring to the French nation its own discoveries, which an emulous and jealous neighbour has endeavoured to appropriate to herself, induced us,” thus the author wrote in his preface to his work, “to connect in one view, all those that we have made towards the south-east of New Guinea; and particularly to prove, that the great land, which Shortland imagined he discovered in 1788, and to which he gave the name of New Georgia, is not a new land, but the southern coast of the Archipelago of the Arsacides, the famous Islands of Solomon, one part of which was discovered after two centuries by M. de Bougainville in 1768, and another more considerable by M. de Surville in 1769.” I need not refer to the detailed arguments of this learned geographical writer. Under his arguments, Surville’s appellation of Terre des Arsacides and Shortland’s of New Georgia,[378] finally gave place to the original title given by the Spanish navigator. “It was the work of M. de Fleurieu,” thus writes Krusenstern,[379] the Russian voyager and hydrographer, “that removed once and for all any doubt that might have been held about the identity of the discoveries of Bougainville, Surville, and Shortland, with the Solomon Islands.” Another illustrious navigator, Dumont D’Urville,[380] thus alludes to the successful labours of his countrymen, . . . “Le laborieux Buache et l’habile Fleurieu travaillèrent tour à tour à établir cette identité qui, depuis, est devenue un fait acquis à la science géographique; les îles relevées par Surville et par Bougainville sont réellement l’archipel Salomon de Mindana.” Thus the lost archipelago was found, not so much by the fortuitous course of the navigator as by the patient investigations of the geographer in his study. The result is intrinsically of little importance to the world at large; but, as an example of the success of a laborious yet discriminate research, it may afford encouragement to all who endeavour to add something to the sum of knowledge.

[377] English translation published in London in 1791.

[378] The designation of New Georgia has been retained in the modern charts for that portion of the group which is known as Rubiana.

[379] “Recueil de Mémoires Hydrographiques,” St. Petersburgh, 1824. Part I., p. 157.

[380] “Histoire Générale des Voyages,” Paris, 1859; p. 228.

I will now refer briefly to the voyagers who subsequently visited this group, after its identity had become established. In May 1790, Lieutenant Ball,[381] in the “Supply,” when on his voyage to England from Port Jackson via Batavia, made the eastern extremity of the Solomon Islands. He sailed along the north side of the group until opposite the middle of Malaita, when he headed more to the eastward and clear of the land. He correctly surmised that he was sailing along the New Georgia of Shortland, but on the opposite side of it: though he looked upon the islands of Santa Anna, Santa Catalina, and Ulaua as his own discoveries, and he named them respectively Sirius’s Island, Massey’s Island, and Smith’s Island. In December 1791, Captain Bowen of the ship “Albemarle,” during his voyage from Port Jackson to Bombay, sailed along the coast of New Georgia, and reported that he had seen the floating wreck of one of the vessels of La Pérouse; but this report was discredited by Captain Dillon in the narrative of his search after the missing expedition.[382] In 1792, Captain Manning,[383] of the Honourable East India Company’s Service, during his voyage from Port Jackson to Batavia in the ship “Pitt,” made the south coast of the Solomon Group off Cape Sidney, which was the headland first sighted by Lieutenant Shortland. Sailing westward, he imagined St. Christoval and Guadalcanar were continuous, and he thus delineates their coasts in his track-chart much as Shortland did. The Russell Islands he named Macaulay’s Archipelago, a name which ought to be retained as a compliment to their discoverer. He then passed between Rubiana and Isabel, naming the high land of the latter island Keate’s Mountains. Passing through the strait between Choiseul and Isabel, which bears his name, Captain Manning proceeded northward on his voyage.

[381] Vide “An Historical Journal,” &c., by Capt. John Hunter. London, 1793; pp. 417-419.

[382] “Voyage in search of La Pérouse’s Expedition.” London, 1829.