The Solomon Islands and Their Natives by H. B. (Henry Brougham) Guppy

Author:H. B. (Henry Brougham) Guppy [Guppy, H. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, New Age, History, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9781465574411
Google: 9cwzFV84o7MC
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2021-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XI.

THE JOURNAL OF GALLEGO—PREFATORY REMARKS.

A considerable interest was aroused in the minds of geographers, rather more than a century ago, by the recent discoveries of French and English navigators in that portion of the Western Pacific in which the Solomon Islands are now known to lie. M. M. Buache and Fleurieu (pages 263-265) endeavoured to show that the islands there discovered were none other than the mysterious Islands of Solomon discovered two centuries before by the Spaniards, the existence of which had been long treated as a myth, and in fact, had almost been forgotten. This view was opposed by Mr. Dalrymple, one of the foremost of the English geographers; and it laboured under the serious disadvantage that the only existing narrative of this Spanish voyage, on which such a conclusion could be based, was a very brief and imperfect account incorporated by Dr. Figueroa[201] in a work that was published at Madrid nearly half a century after the return of the voyagers to Peru. There were some reasons for believing that Hernando Gallego, the chief pilot of the expedition, had kept a journal of the voyage;[202] but the geographical writers of the close of last century failed to have access to such an account, and its existence was doubted by some of them. The only other account, worthy of the name, that was known to these writers was one included by Herrera in his “Descripcion de las Indias Occidentales,” a work which was published at Madrid about the year 1601, or more than thirty years after the Spanish voyagers had returned to Peru. But this account was a somewhat vague, general description of the Solomon Islands, which, although it contained a few additional particulars, was of little service to the cartographer.

[201] Hechos de Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, Quarto Marques de Canete; por el Doctor Christoval Suarez de Figueroa. Madrid, 1613. Vide Note I. of the Geographical Appendix.

[202] A MS. journal of Gallego was referred to by Penelo as occurring in the Barcia Library. (Dalrymple’s Hist. Coll. Voy. and Disc.: p. 96.)

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