The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606. Volume 1

by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós

Introduction.

The Council of the Hakluyt Society has decided that the volumes containing the narratives of the discovery of the Solomon Islands by Mendaña shall be followed by a monograph on the two voyages of Quiros. In the first voyage he was Chief Pilot to Mendaña; the second and most famous voyage was under his own command.

The best and most detailed narrative of both voyages is contained in a work which remained in manuscript until twenty-eight years ago, when it was edited and published at Madrid by Don Justo Zaragoza. It is entitled History of the Discovery of the Austrial Regions, made by the General Pedro Fernandez de Quiros.[1] Two copies were known to be in existence: one in the private library of the King of Spain, the other in that of the Ministry of Marine. Both have erroneous titles, written by careless librarians. The narratives were evidently dictated by Quiros, or written from his notes; but Señor Zaragoza gives reasons for the belief that the work, in its present form, was written by Luis de Belmonte Bermudez, a young man who was Secretary to Quiros during the voyage of 1606, and that it contains several passages for which the Secretary was alone responsible. Belmonte Bermudez remained faithful to Quiros in his adversity, and, after his master’s death, he became a poet of some celebrity. Señor Zaragoza quotes several passages which show the hand of a poet.[2] There is also a quotation from the Araucana of Ercilla on unknown lands not yet revealed by God, to which is added another version by the young sailor-poet on those unknown lands now revealed by God.[3]

The author is mentioned twice in the narrative: once as being nearly drowned in landing on the island of Anaa[4] (“Conversion de San Pablo”), and again in the list of officials for the municipality of the city of New Jerusalem projected by Quiros.[5] The question of authorship is really settled by the poet himself, in a line of his poem entitled La Hispalica, quoted by Zaragoza. Speaking of Quiros as his “Lusitanian master, the star of gallant Portuguese,” he adds that, in recording the history of the voyage there was:—

“Want of a writer, which I supplied.”

The Historia, as published by Zaragoza, is continuous in eighty-one chapters. It has been found more convenient to divide the translation into two parts: the first containing the second voyage of Mendaña, and the second part being the story of the voyage of Quiros in 1606.

The present volume commences with the first part of the History of the Discovery of the Austrial Regions. It describes the second voyage of Mendaña in much detail, including the discovery of the Marquesas Islands and of the island of Santa Cruz, the death of Mendaña, and the terrible passage from Santa Cruz to Manilla. It is certainly a most extraordinary story.

In the work entitled Hechos del Marques de Cañete, a life of one of the Viceroys of Peru, by Cristoval Suarez de Figueroa,[6] Book VI contains an abbreviated version of the narrative in the Historia, generally copied word for word. Numerous details are omitted, particularly such as are derogatory to the Spanish character. There are also a few passages which are not in the Historia, but none having any bearing on the events of the voyage. Suarez de Figueroa tells us that he had the narrative of Quiros before him as he wrote. For these reasons I have considered it unnecessary to translate the version of Suarez de Figueroa, as it is merely a mutilated version of the narrative in the Historia. The account in the work of Suarez de Figueroa was the only version of the second voyage of Mendaña that was known to our historians of Pacific voyages, Dalrymple and Burney.

There is a short report of the second voyage of Mendaña, to Antonio de Morga, the Governor of the Philippines, by Quiros himself. It was translated and printed by Lord Stanley of Alderley, in his edition of the work of Antonio de Morga (Hakluyt Society, 1868). I have caused it to be reprinted in this volume, in order to make the monograph of Quiros complete.

For the voyage of Quiros in 1606, when he discovered the Duff and Banks groups of islands, and the New Hebrides, there are no less than four separate accounts.