[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.
[337] Letter from Quiros to Don Antonio de Morga, Governor of the Philippines.
The popular ignorance of these islands naturally increased the mystery that surrounded them; and their wealth and resources were soon increased ten-fold under the influence of the imaginative faculties of the Spaniards. Lopez Vaz, the Portuguese already referred to, writing about the year 1586 of the recent American discoveries, remarked that “the greatest and most notable discovery that hath beene from those parts now of late, was that of the Isles of Salomon.” But romance and fact are strangely mingled in his story. We learn from him, for the first time, that the Spaniards, although “not seeking nor being desirous of gold,” brought back with them, from the island of Guadalcanar, 40,000 _pezos_[338] of the precious metal. No reference is made to such a find of gold on the part of the Spaniards in the accounts of Gallego and Figueroa: and it is probable that the reports to this effect may have originally arisen out of the circumstance that, when the ships were being refitted and provisioned at the port of Realejo, on the Nicaraguan coast, for the completion of their voyage to Peru, the necessary expenses, which amounted to 1800 _pezos_, were defrayed by the Chief-Pilot, Gallego.[339]