Early Mapping

of the Pacific
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Early Mapping
of the Pacific
The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers
Who Mapped the Earth's Greatest Ocean

THOMAS SUAREZ

PERIPLUS
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Front endpaper. Fig. 1. World map, Frederic de Wit, sentation of Southeast Asian islands. Page 2: theories about the "grand chain of mountains that
1660 (ca. 1700). [Maryayan Lan, NY] Page h Fig. 2. Fig. 3 . Islamic World Map, Zekeriya Kazvini, traverses eastern Asia and western America." An
Volvelle on a north polar projection, Peter Apianus, Acaib-iil Mahlukat (The Wonders of Creation), "inhabited island" lies at virtually the exact
1524, based on the Waldseemiiller pattern of 1507 Istanbul, ca. 1553. An unusual depiction of the position of Hawaii, about 40° west of Baja
(Fig. 28). Apianus's use of a north polar projection earths seas contained by the encircling moun- California and 19° north latitude. Quiros's
allows the Pacific to be mapped unbroken. The land- tains of Qaf, the whole resting, via land and sea Marquesas are based on a similar source as later
mass labeled "America" is South America; the island creatures, in the firmament on an "ocean" in a used by Dalrymple (Fig. 130), and Roggeveen's
above left is Central and North America. T h e Pacific's cosmic vessel. [Library of Congress] Back end- Easter Island (Isle de Pdques) lies near Davis's
only inhabitants are Japan, based on Marco Polo (just paper: Fig. 223. Physical map of the Pacific by land, which Roggeveen had been searching for
left of North America, at 270°), and a simple repre- Philippe Buache, 1744 (1754), illustrating his when he discovered it. [Antipodean Books].
for my parents, to whom I owe everything

Acknowledgments Above: Fig. 4. World map, Jose da

My thanks to Rodrigue Levesque for saving me from would-be errors in my coverage of Micronesia; Frank Costa Miranda, 1706. [The Mitchell
Manasek for guiding me on scientific matters; David and Cathy Lilburne of Antipodean Books for opening their Library, Library of New South Wales,
Sydney] Overleaf. Fig. 5. Pacific
reference library to me; Jared Manasek for translating the old German relating to Fig. 135; Alfonso Suarez for
Ocean, Levasseur, 1838. Pages 8 and
translating the old Spanish in the Mendoza y Gonzalez book from which Fig. 100 derives; also David Woodward, 9: Fig. 6. Japan wedged between
Ben Finney, Giinter Schilder, and John Suarez. California and China, with Pacific
Several of the finest dealers in early maps generously allowed me to reproduce items from their collections, islands discovered by Bernardo de la
and they are acknowledged with the images. Three of these stand out in terms of the sheer greed with which I Torre in 1543 on the east, and the
imposed on them: Robert Augustyn, early map specialist at Martayan Lan Rare Maps and Books, New York; Liu-ch'iu islands ending at Taiwan
(fermosa) on the west (detail),
Alan and Charlene Walker of Lahaina Printsellers, Maui; and Paul and Mona Nicholas of Kauai Fine Arts.
Abraham Ortelius, 1570; Fig. 7.
The reproduction of maps in institutions would not have been possible without the assistance of specific
Depiction of the Portuguese in the
individuals. At the Library of Congress, Washington, D C , I would like to thank first and foremost the remarkable Indian Ocean, from Linschoten's
James Flatness of the Map Division, whose expertise is rivaled only by his generosity; also Tracy Arcaro, Gerald Itinerario, 1596; Fig. 8. Southeastern-
Wager, and David Robinson of the Rare Book Division, and Jeffrey Flannery of the Manuscript Division. My most section of the "Catalan Atlas,"
gratitude also to Dr Cornelia Topelmann, Universitatsbibliothek Miinchen; Eliane Perez, Biblioteca Nacional a world map attributed to Abraham
(Rio de Janeiro); Christine Campbell, The British Library; Marijke Bessels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague); Cresques, ca. 1375. [From a facsimile
in the Library of Congress]; Fig. 9.
Barbara Dunn, Hawaiian Historical Society; Janea Milburn, Naval Historical Foundation; Margot Riley, The
Polynesian girl, drawing by Alfred
Mitchell Library, Library of New South Wales, Sydney; Ellen R. Cordes, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Agate of the US Exploring Expedi-
Library, Yale University, and Louis A. Hieb, University of Washington Libraries. tion, ca. 1840. [Naval Historical
Robert Augustyn and Nick Ingleton were instrumental in making possible the publication of my previous Foundation]
book, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia (Periplus Editions, 1999) and without the success of that book, the present
volume would never have materialized.
Finally, my thanks to Eric Oey of Periplus Editions, for whom writing has been a pleasure and an honor, and
Noor Azlina Yunus, whose editorial expertise helped my work remain organized despite this being utterly alien
to my nature.
Contents
Introduction 12

Chapter 1 The Pacific Islands and Their People 14

Human Settlers; The European Record; Pacific Settlement: Deliberate or Accidental?;
Cosmology; Indigenous Maps; Pacific Regions

Chapter 2 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 26

Early Cartographic Traces; The Discovery of America Defines the Pacific; Two Patterns
of Early Pacific Mapping; On the Eve of Magellan; The Pacific's East-West Breadth;
The Pacific's North-South Limits; Terra Australis and Other Enticements

Chapter 3 The Pacific Evolves after Magellan 48

Medieval Lore Mixes with New Discoveries

Chapter 4 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands 60

The Solomons on Printed Maps; Francis Drake's Circumnavigation; The Marquesas:
Mendana's Second Expedition; Quiros and Torres

Chapter 5 Earliest Mapping of Australia and New Zealand 78

Mapping the Dutch Discovery of Australia; The "Pacific" Land of Beach; Jacob Le Maire;
Abel Tasman

Chapter 6 The Age of Enlightenment 106

The English Map Trade; Scientists and Buccaneers; Literary Pacific Landscapes; Further
Searches for Terra Australis; The European Discovery of Easter Island and Samoa;
A Renaissance of English Voyages; Bougainville Follows the English Lead;
Thomas Forrest in the Western Pacific
Chapter 7 The Three Voyages of James Cook 128
The First Voyage; The Second Voyage; The Third Voyage

Chapter 8 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 140

Tahiti and the Mapping of the Cosmos; The Tahitian Navigator, Tupaia; Later Explorers
and Missionaries Map Tahiti; The European Discovery of Tahiti; Do Maps Record
Hawaii before Cook?; Missionaries and the Mapping of Hawaii

Chapter 9 The Eighteenth Century after Cook 168

La Perouse; The Rediscovery of the Solomon Islands; William Bligh

Chapter 10 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 178

Missionaries Question Islanders to Construct Maps; The Methodical Mapping of
Micronesia

Chapter 11 Surveyors, Whalers, and Missionaries 194

The Marquesas; The London Missionary Society; Russian Expeditions Combine Science
and Commerce; The French Expeditions; Mapping below the Surface; The United States
Exploring Expedition; Thematic and Oceanographic Mapping

Bibliography 218

Index 220
List of Figures 47.
Girolamo Ruscelli, 1561.
Southwest Pacific Ocean from the Vallard atlas, ca. 1547.
51
52-53
48. Java, Henricum Petri/Johann Honter, 1561. 54
1. World map, Frederick de Wit, 1660 (ca. 1700). front endpaper
49. Western Pacific Ocean, Abraham Ortelius, 1570. 54
2. Volvelle on a north polar projection, Peter Apianus, 1524. 1
50. The island of men (Inebild) and the island of women
3. Islamic world map, Zekeriya Kazvini, ca. 1553. 2
(Imangia), Andre Thevet, 1575. 55
4. World map, Jose da Costa Miranda, 1706. 4-5
51. North Pacific Ocean, Joao Teixeira Albernaz I, 1630. 56-57
5. Pacific Ocean, Levasseur, 1838. 6-7
52. America, Willem Blaeu, ca. 1608 (Pietro Todeschi, ca. 1673). 58
6. Northern Pacific Ocean, detail from Tartariae sive Magni Chami
53. Japan, Renward Cysat, 1586. 59
Regni, Abraham Ortelius, 1570. 8
54. Japan, Johannes Metellus, 1596. 59
7. Portuguese riding in an Indian Ocean vessel, Linschoten, 1596. 8
8. Southeasternmost section of the "Catalan Atlas," attributed to
Abraham Cresques, ca. 1375. 9
9. Drawing of a Polynesian girl, Alfred Agate, ca. 1840. 9 Chapter 4 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands
10. Pacific Ocean, John Tallis, ca. 1851. 13
55. New Guinea and Solomon Islands, Cornelis de Jode, 1593. 60
56. World map on a double polar projection, Cornelis de Jode,
1593. 62-63
Chapter 1 The Pacific Islands and Their People 57. America, Abraham Ortelius, 1587. 64
11. Marshallese stick chart, twentieth century. 14 58. Pacific Ocean, Abraham Ortelius, 1589. 65
12. Geocentric universe, Johann Honter, 1546. 15 59. New Guinea and Solomon Islands, Barent Langenes, 1598. 66
13. Pacific Ocean, Arnold Colon, ca. 1658. 16 60. World map recording the voyages of Francis Drake and
14. Double canoe of Tonga, Nicolas Piron, 1800. 18 Thomas Cavendish, Jodocus Hondius, ca. 1595. 66
15. Scene in Polynesia, late nineteenth century. 19 61. Southwest Pacific Ocean, Jodocus Hondius, 1606. 67
16. Offshore view of Pohnpei, Frederic Liitke, 1836. 20 62. Pacific Ocean, two details of a world map joined, Girolamo
17. Children on Pohnpei, Thomas Suarez, 1974. 21 Ruscelli, 1561, after the 1548 map of Giacomo Gastaldi. 68
18. Pacific Ocean, Antonio Sanches, 1641. 22-23 63. World map, Abraham Ortelius, 1570. 69
19. View in New Ireland, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. 24 64. Pacific Ocean, Gabriel Tatton, ca. 1600. 70
65. Pacific Ocean, Andries Henry de Leth, ca. 1740. 71
66. South Pacific Ocean, Joao Teixeira Albernaz I, 1630. 72-73
67. Southwest Pacific Ocean, detail of map of America, Jodocus
Chapter 2 Mariners, Mapmakers, and Hondius, 1606. 74
the Great Ocean 68. Eastern Pacific, from a map of America, J. B. Nolin, ca. 1740. 75
69. Hemisphere focusing on the southwestern Pacific Ocean
20. Section of the Wubei zhi (Treatise on Military Preparations), antipodal to Paris, Moullard-Sanson, ca. 1697. 76
MaoYuanji, 1621. 26
70. Pacific Ocean, Pieter Vander Aa, 1706. 76
21. Northern Pacific Ocean, Antonio Zatta, 1776. 27
71. World map, 1521, after Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius
22. Jain world map, Manusyaloka (The Human World),
(flourished ca. AD 399-423). 77
late nineteenth century. 28
72. World map, Petrus Plancius, 1594. 77
23. Islamic world map (The Pearl of Wonders and the
Uniqueness of Things Strange), late seventeenth century. 28
24. Fragment of a calendar with geographic motives, fifteenth
century (?), preserved in Rudolph Becker, Holzschnitte Chapter 5 Earliest Mapping of Australia
alter deutscher Meister in den Original-Platten... Gotha, 1808. 29 and New Zealand
25. China/Caribbean Sea (detail), from the world map of Johann
Ruysch, 1507. 30 73. Eastern Indian Ocean, detail from a map by Heinrich
26. Hemisphere showing the Pacific Ocean, Johann Schoner, 1515- 31 Bunting, 1581. 78
27. Asia and America, A. Zorzi and B. Columbus, 1506-22. 31 74. Western Pacific Ocean, Linschoten, 1595 (1596). 79
28. World map, Martin Waldseemiiller, 1507. 32-33 75. Southwest Pacific Ocean, Joao Teixeira Albernaz I, 1630. 80-81
29. Pacific Ocean (hemisphere), Henricus Glareanus, ca. 1510. 34-35 76. Pacific Ocean, Hessel Gerritsz, 1622. 82-83
30. World map, after Claudius Ptolemy, 1482 (i486). 36 77. World map, Jacques l'Hermite, 1626 (1631). 84
31. World map (detail), attributed to Hans Holbein and 78. Southwest Pacific Ocean, detail from a hemispherical map,
Sebastian Miinster, 1532. 36 G. B. Nicolosi, 1660. 84
32. World map, Franciscus Monachus, ca. 1527. 37 79. New Guinea and northern Australia, Allain Mallet, 1683. 85
33. World map, Oronce Fine, 1534 (Cimerlino, 1566). 38 80. America, Richard Hakluyt, 1587. 86
34. World map, Battista Agnese, ca. 1544. 39 81. South Pacific Ocean, with the tracks of Le Maire and
35. Pacific Ocean, from the "Miller Atlas," composed by Schouten, Le Maire, 1619 (Herrera, 1622). 87
Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel, Jorge Reinel, and Gregorio 82. Cocos and H o m e Islands, Robert Dudley, 1647. 87
Lopes, ca. 1519. 40-41 83. Pacific Ocean, Jodocus Hondius/Jean le Clerc, 1602. 88
36. World map, Giacomo Gastaldi, 1546. 42-43 84. Pacific Ocean (detail), Jan Jansson, 1650. 89
37. Western North America and the Northern Pacific Ocean, 85. World map showing the tracks of Le Maire to the East
Cornelis de Jode, 1593. 44 Indies, and the return route of Spilbergen, Spilbergen, 1619. 89
38. Hypothetical sea route from northern Europe to the 86. Pacific Ocean, Johannes van Loon, 1661. 90-91
Pacific Ocean, Helisaeus Roslin, 1611. 45 87. Southwest Pacific Ocean, Frederick de Wit, 1680. 92-93
39. Western Pacific Ocean (detail), Melchisedech Thevenot, 88. Pacific Ocean, Van Keulen, 1684 (ca. 1700). 94-95
1664 (ca. 1690). 46 89. Southern Pacific Ocean, Pierre du Val, 1679 (1684). 96-97
40. Bering Strait, Otto von Kotzebue, 1825. 47 90. Pacific Ocean, Coronelli, 1696. 98
41. Siberian coast near the Bering Strait, Frederic Liitke, ca. 1832. 47 91. New Zealand, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu,
Allain Mallet, 1683. 98
92. Western Pacific Ocean, Henrick Doncker, ca. 1660. 99
Chapter 3 The Pacific Evolves after Magellan 93. Pacific Ocean, unsigned but attributed to the Teixeira
school, ca. 1632. 100-101
42. Guam and Rota, Antonio Pigafetta, ca. 1525. 48 94. Isaac Le Maire approaching the H o m e Islands, 1616
43. Asia and America, Sebastian Miinster, 1540. 49 (Gottfried, 1640). 102
44. Pacific Ocean, recording the tracks of Magellan's vessel 95. Pacific Ocean, Frederick de Wit, 1680. 103
Victoria around the globe, Battista Agnese, ca. 1544. 50 96. Australia and Terra Australis, detail from a map by
45. Japan, Benedetto Bordone, 1528. 51 Hendrikvan Langren, ca. 1599 (ca. 1625). 103
46. New Guinea, detail from Orbis Descriptio of 97. Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Nicolas de Fer, 1713. 104-105
Chapter 6 The Age of Enlightenment 161. Hawaiian Islands, Sheldon Dibble, 1843. 166
162. Maui, W. D. Alexander, 1885. 167
98. Pacific Ocean, John Seller, 1675. 106
99. Island of California, Peter Goos, 1666. 107
100. Pacific Ocean, Juan Antonio de Mendoza y Gonzalez, 1727. 108 Chapter 9 The Eighteenth Century after Cook
101. Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean, from a Thai
Traiphum cosmography, 1776. 109 163. Bismarck and Solomon islands, detail of a map by Jean-Francois
102. Taiwan, Francois Valentijn, 1724-6. 109 de La Perouse after Francisco Antonio Maurelle, 1797. 168
103. Philippine Islands, William Hack, ca. 1690. 110-111 164. Easter Island, Jean-Francois de La Perouse, 1797. 169
104. World map, Edmund Halley, ca. 1740. 112-113 165. Honshu and Hokkaido, detail of a chart by La Perouse, 1797. 169
105. Juan Fernandez, Tobias Smollett, 1756. 113 166. Samoa (detail), Jean-Francois de La Perouse, 1797. 170
106. Lilliput, Jonathan Swift, 1726 (1735). 114 167. View in Easter Island, Jean-Francois de La Perouse, 1797. 171
107. Brobdingnag and California, Jonathan Swift, 1726 (1735). 114 168. Western Australia, detail from a map by Nicolas Piron, 1800. 172
108. Japan, Hokkaido, Company's Land, Lugnagg, Laputa, 169. Santa Cruz Islands, C. F. Beautemps-Beaupre, ca. 1805. 172
and Balnibarbi, Jonathan Swift, 1726 (1735). 115 170. Santa Cruz Islands, C. F. Beautemps-Beaupre, ca. 1805. 173
109. Houyhnhnms Land, Jonathan Swift, 1726 (1735). 115 171. Santa Cruz Islands, Bruny-Dentrecasteaux, 1807. 174
110. View in Apia (Samoa), Dumont d'Urville, 1842. 116 172. View in the Admiralty Islands, Nicolas Piron, 1800. 175
111. Northern Pacific Ocean (detail), George Anson, 1748. 116 173. Oceania, Franz Joh. Jos. von Reilly, 1795. 176-177
112. Philippine Islands, Francisco Diaz Romero, 1727. 117
113. Islands in the vicinity of Tahiti, Hawkesworth, 1773. 118
114. New Ireland, Philip Carteret, from Hawkesworth, 1773. 119 Chapter 10 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles
115. South Pacific Ocean, Antonio Zatta, 1776. 120-121
116. Pitcairn Island, Philip Carteret, from Hawkesworth, 1773. 122 174. Western Pacific Ocean, Giacomo Gastaldi, 1554 (1563). 179
117. View in Pitcairn, Frederick Beechey, 1831. 122 175. Southwest Pacific, Petrus Plancius, 1594/J. Visscher, 1617. 180
118. South Pacific Ocean (detail), Gentleman's Magazine, 1773. 123 176. Mariana Islands, Father Charles Le Gobien, 1700. 181
119. World map, Heinrich Scherer, 1700. 124 177. Guam, Father Charles Le Gobien, 1700. 182
120. Coast of Java at Batavia, Louis de Bougainville, 1768. 125 178. View in Palau, George Keate, 1788. 183
121. Eastern Indonesia, Thomas Forrest, 1779. 126-127 179. Caroline Islands, Father Paul Klein, 1696 (1705). 184
180. Caroline Islands, Joseph Stocklein, 1726. 185
181. Caroline Islands, Father Juan Antonio Cantova, 1722 (1728). 186
182. Caroline and Philippine Islands, Henry Wilson, 1788. 187
Chapter 7 The Three Voyages of James Cook 183. Kiribati (Gilbert) Islands (detail), Louis Duperrey, 1827. 188
122. New Zealand, after James Cook, Antonio Zatta, 1778. 128 184. Wotje (detail), Otto von Kotzebue, 1825. 188
123. Society Islands, Giovanni Cassini, 1798. 129 185. Northern Marshall Islands, Otto von Kotzebue, 1830. 189
124. Eastern Australia (globe gore), Vincenzo Coronelli, 1688. 130 186. Caroline Islands, Otto von Kotzebue, 1825. 189
125. New Zealand (globe gore), Vincenzo Coronelli, 1688. 130 187. Caroline Islands, Luis de Torres, 1825. 189
126. Botany Bay (New South Wales), James Cook, 1773. 131 188. Kosrae, Louis Duperrey, 1827. 190
127. Southern Pacific Ocean, Joseph Banks, 1772. 132 189. Kosrae (detail), Louis Duperrey, 1827. 190
128. Southern hemisphere (detail), Philippe Buache, ca. 1754. 133 190. Chuuk, Caroline Islands, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. 191
129. Southern Tonga Islands, James Cook, 1777. 134 191. Caroline Islands, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. 192
130. Marquesas Islands (detail), Alexander Dalrymple, 1770. 135 192. Pohnpei, Caroline Islands, Frederic Ltitke, ca. 1832. 193
131. Marquesas Islands, James Cook, 1777. 135
132. New Caledonia and Vanuatu, James Cook, 1777. 136
133. Dance by women on Lifuka (Tonga), John Webber, 1784. 137 Chapter 11 Surveyors, Whalers, and Missionaries
134. Southern Tonga Islands, after James Cook, Cassini, 1798. 138
135. Death of James Cook, from a German newspaper of 1781. 139 193. "Rock" island in the southern Pacific, Joseph Ingraham, 1791. 195
194. View of the Marquesas Islands, Joseph Ingraham, 1791. 195
195. Northern Pacific, from Hawaii, Joseph Ingraham, 1791. 196
196. Northwest Pacific, through Taiwan, Joseph Ingraham, 1791. 197
Chapter 8 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 197. Tongatapu, southern Tonga Islands, James Wilson, 1799. 198
136. View of Papeete, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. 141 198. Mangareva, James Wilson, 1799. 199
137. Tahiti, by the midshipman Pinnock, 1767. 142 199. Marquesas Islands, James Wilson, 1799. 199
138. View of Tahiti, Louis de Bougainville, 1768. 143 200. Fiji, James Wilson, 1799. 200
139. Tahiti, James Cook, 1769. 144-145 201. Duff Islands, James Wilson, 1799. 201
140. Tahiti, after James Cook, Giovanni Cassini, 1798. 146 202. Northern Pacific Ocean, Russian [anonymous], 1802. 201
141. Society Islands and neighboring Polynesia, based on the 203. Tuamotu Islands, Otto von Kotzebue, 1825. 202-203
Tahitian navigator Tupaia, 1778. 147 204. New Zealand, A. J. von Krusenstern, 1827. 202
142. View of Opunohu Bay (Moorea), James Wilson, 1799. 149 205. Samoa, Otto von Kotzebue, 1830. 203
143. Opunohu Bay (Moorea), James Cook, 1784. 149 206. Australia, Louis Freycinet, 1808. 204
144. Tahiti, James Wilson, 1799. 150 207. Pacific Ocean (detail), Frederick Bennett, 1840. 205
145. Vaihiria Lake, from the map of Tahiti, James Wilson, 1799. 150 208. Western Bora-Bora, Louis Duperrey, 1827. 205
146. Hawaiian Islands, James Cook, 1784. 151 209. New Zealand, C. A. Vincendon-Dumoulin, 1842. 206
147. Northern Pacific Ocean, Pierre du Val, 1679 (1684). 152-153 210. Fiji, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. 207
148. View of Maui, Jean-Francois de La Perouse, 1797. 155 211. Vanikoro (Santa Cruz Islands), Dumont d'Urville, 1830. 208
149. Hawaiian Islands, Jean-Francois de La Perouse, 1798 (1799). 155 212. View in Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, Dumont d'Urville, ca. 1845. 209
150. Hawaiian Islands, Joseph Ingraham, 1791. 156 213. Aboard d'Urville's boat in Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, ca. 1845. 210
151. Hawaiian Islands, A. J. von Krusenstern, 1827. 157 214. Nuku Hiva (Marquesas), Abel Pilon, ca. 1885. 210
152. Honolulu (detail), Otto von Kotzebue, 1823. 158 215. Tongan Islands, William Mariner, 1827. 210-211
153. Honolulu (detail), Otto von Kotzebue, 1823. 158 216. Samoa, US Exploring Expedition, ca. 1844. 212
154. View of the Pali (Oahu), Auguste-Nicolas Vaillant, ca. 1840. 159 217. Pago Pago Harbor, US Exploring Expedition, ca. 1844. 212
155. Lahaina (Maui), Louis Duperrey, 1826. 160 218. Fiji Islands, US Exploring Expedition, ca. 1844. 213
156. Kilauea volcano (Hawaii), Charles Maiden, 1826. 161 219. "Whale" map, recording presence of various species of
157. Oahu (Hawaii), Ursula Emerson, 1833. 162-163 whale in the oceans, Matthew Fontaine Maury, 1851. 214-215
158. Hawaiian islands, from the press of the missionary school 220. World map, Japanese, ca. 1850. 216-217
in Lahainaluna, Maui, 1837. 164 221. Pacific map on a shipping crate label, 1917. 217
159. View of Honolulu, Auguste-Nicolas Vaillant, ca. 1840. 165 222. Drawing of Polynesian man, Alfred Agate, ca. 1840. 217
160. View of Lahaina (Maui), Sheldon Dibble, 1843. 166 223. Pacific Ocean, Philippe Buache, 1744 (1754). back endpaper
Introduction

Imagine thousands of self-sufficient nations, terrestrial micro- pilgrim traveling from to Dakar to Timbuktu, from Istanbul to
cosms linked not by valleys and rivers, not by deserts or forests, Mecca, from Seville to Jerusalem, could follow fixed features, both
but by seemingly endless, featureless ocean. To the Pacific Islanders, natural and man-made. One could with reasonable confidence
this was the world. Around it, they evolved their civilizations and travel for days and months to a place he or she had never visited
geographic methods. To Europeans, this ocean was the far side by following geographic directions, tracing one's way past features
of the earth. An ocean that in maximum breadth spans virtually recorded by previous travelers. A misstep would not in itself result
half the earth's circumference, it baffled mapmakers for four and in likely death. Until the discovery of America, virtually anywhere
a half centuries before its surface was laid down with confidence. in the known world could be reached by land. Marco Polo, for
In its scale, diversity, extremes of climate, and lack of points of example, traveled from Venice to China—a distance far less than
reference, the challenges it presented the explorer and mapmaker the breadth of the Pacific—by following points of reference. No
dwarfed those of any other entity on earth. such cartographic "markers" facilitated early travel in the Pacific.
For most of medieval humanity, the world consisted of dry The Pacific was also an important element of the geographic
earth of uncertain extent, bordered by sea. The earth was defined thought of the eastern Asian peoples. Unlike Europeans, in China
primarily by its land, and even people of archipelagos could relate and Southeast Asia the earth was generally believed to be flat, and
their island to a core continent. Many people of the Aegean Islands, thus the ocean sea was especially ambiguous—it did not necessarily
for example, may never have set foot on the mainland, but they "end" somewhere on continental shores. Chinese cosmography
could understand their island's position in relation to neighboring typically depicted the plane of the earth to be tilted, inclined to
isles and, in turn, to Greece or Asia Minor. the mountainous northwest of China and leaning "down" to the
But for the people of Oceania, the world was eternal sea; dry Pacific in the southeast. The Pacific was thus where the earth's
earth was the precious exception. Pacific Islanders typically knew water accumulated, and for the various peoples of eastern Asia it
that their land was limited in extent, even if they themselves had was, according to the sixteenth-century European explorer Mendes
not seen its frontiers. Just to know that a village fisherman would Pinto, "the outer edge of the world."
be away for five nights and circumnavigate the known land, created The mapping of the Pacific was the work of many peoples,
a wholly different cosmographic perspective from someone who approached from different perspectives. Pacific Islanders offered
knew that even sailors who had been away for years returned pieces of the puzzle—the shape of an individual island, the relative
knowing nothing of the dry earth's full circuit if, in fact, it had positions of a group of neighboring islands, the nature of an
bounds. Amplifying this difference, until the fifteenth century interior region, undersea formations, or the location of fishing
European sailors rarely ventured very far from sight of shore. grounds. Asian pilots were familiar with many islands in the
Pacific Islanders mapping the world beyond their island would westernmost Pacific. Europeans tied together the sundry pieces
face two choices: below them lay sea devoid of any landmarks to to make a coherent whole, supplementing their own data with
record their way or gauge distance, while above them lay a sky whatever they could glean from those who lived there.
which was rich in features and landmarks but was ever moving. This sharing of knowledge was not always easy. Islanders' maps
The collective experience of many generations revealed subtle were, with rare exception, ephemeral, typically shells or stones set
"cartographic" signs in the sea that European eyes missed and that upon the ground. They generally quantified distance by travel time,
guided them where maps failed. Generations of eyes peering relating the number of days' sailing around and between islands.
upward garnered similarly hard-won secrets from the moving stars. Islanders' knowledge of the heavens was of little value to European
Mapping the Pacific was as much a study of the sky as the earth. navigational techniques, and the Europeans' knowledge of map-
Itineraries or travel directions, among the most prevalent and making was of no use to the islanders until they adopted Western
useful forms of early "maps," were similarly odd in the Pacific. A navigational equipment and theory.
 Introduction 13

THE LONDONE PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY

Fig. 10. The Pacific, John Tallis, ca. 1851.

What did it mean to "map" the Pacific? For Europeans, until Ideally, the cartography of Pacific Islanders would be our starting
the nineteenth century it was primarily determining the ocean's point, but since these pioneers rarely left any tangible record, much
perimeter and placing its islands in context, and only secondarily of their story is elusive for the scope of this book. Asian and Arab
the mapping of the islands themselves. Mapping the features pilots frequented the islands of the westernmost Pacific before
beneath the sea was always important when they reached within Europeans, but much of what is known of their early western
contact of a ship bottom, but the ocean floor was not seriously Pacific cartography must be gleaned from indirect sources.
tackled until the late nineteenth century, and not mapped with Pilot books, trade records, herbal treatises, and even literature,
any precision until the latter part of the twentieth century have been tapped to construct a better idea of Asian geographic
By the end of the seventeenth century, non-geographic and knowledge of the westernmost Pacific than the dearth of surviving
non-topographic Pacific data were also analyzed and set to maps. early maps has allowed.The European mapping of the Pacific was
Latitudes at which specific winds blow, and magnetic declination, at times a mapping of the European psyche: such icons of Christen-
were among the earlier non-geographic data of interest to Euro- dom as Paradise, Ophir, the lost tribes of Israel, and Purgatory, all
pean mapmakers. The locations and habits of various Pacific fish found their way to the Pacific at the hands of European authors
and mammal species were laid to charts by the mid-nineteenth and mapmakers. The Classical belief in an antipodal continent
century, and the mapping of more esoteric data followed, such as blossomed in the Pacific. Even the European self-examination of
the water temperatures at various depths and the cyclical changes its own mores and values was mirrored in the Pacific, particularly
in those temperatures, as well as the presence of exploitable in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the ills that led
resources on the ocean bottom. to revolution in Europe found antidotes in perceived ideal Pacific
This book attempts to give a general overview of the evolution Island civilizations. Refining the charts of Oceania began only in
of cartographic knowledge of the Pacific. The story is largely that the latter eighteenth century, all the efforts of the preceding two
of Europeans, who aggressively explored the Pacific and were singu- and a half centuries yielding little more than a rare tiny speck
larly enamored of the mass-production and dissemination of maps. placed with little confidence on a nearly empty canvas.
Chapter 1

The Pacific Islands and Their People

About 250 million years ago, the earth had one continent, the
original single landmass of Pangaea, and one ocean—the Pacific.
All of earth's other seas are subdivisions of the primordial Pacific,
created when Pangaea split apart to form the continents we know
today. This concept of the Pacific as the original ocean was not
possible until the planet's continental outlines were known with
accuracy, the jigsaw-like nature of their forms noted, and the
concept of continental drift understood. In 1858, Antoine Snider
observed that the continents all fitted neatly together like pieces of
a puzzle. The implication of that observation—that the continents
were originally one—was pursued by Alfred Wegemer, who champ-
ioned the theory of continental drift in 1912. But no force was
known that could move continents, which were thought to be
permanently fixed in their positions on the earth. Three decades
later, however, researchers began piecing together evidence that
could explain the process of plate tectonics, which became widely
accepted in the latter part of the twentieth century.
Even with its dramatic decrease in size since the time of
Pangaea, the Pacific is still the largest entity on the earth's surface,
greater than all the earth's land combined. The Pacific is the stage
of the earth's most violent and active volcanoes (Krakatau in
Indonesia, Kilauea in Hawaii), its deepest depression (Mariana
Trench), its highest base-to-summit mountain (Mauna Kea in
Hawaii), its most powerful storms and most placid calms.
Although the Pacific is the oldest ocean, it contains some of
the earth's newest land, the progeny of its active geology. Several
light oceanic plates comprise the Pacific: Nazca, running along the
Pacific waters of South America; Cocos, along Central America; Opposite: Fig 11: Marshallese stick chart. [Library of Congress] Above: Fig. 12.
Juan de Fuca, off Oregon, Washington, and southern British The geocentric universe, Honter, 1546, showing the dry earth a single terra, look-
ing to modern eyes almost like Pangaea. The ocean sea which surrounds it is the
Columbia; the Philippine; the Fiji; and the main, enormous first of the several surrounding spheres, the others being air, fire, and the planets.
Pacific plate, covering the remaining bulk of the ocean. These
are surrounded by five heavy continental plates: those of North
America, South America, Antarctica, India-Australia, and Eurasia. below their current levels and exposed land bridges that are now
Volcanic activity occurs where these plates meet. Where plates submerged. Estimates of the first migrations range from about
drift apart, such activity may be frequent, but mild. Where plates 25,000 to as far back as 50,000 years ago. The southwest Pacific
are shoved against each other, volcanic activity can be violent. then consisted of two principal features: a continent dubbed Sahul
Humans are relative newcomers to all but the southwestern comprising what are now New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, and
Pacific islands and Australia. These were first settled when glaciers the higher sea floor connecting them; and a large extension of the
locked up such a staggering volume of water that the seas sat well Southeast Asian mainland comprising what are now the western
16 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 13. Arnold Colom, ca. 1658. Found in the last (third) edition of Arnold Colom's Zee Atlas ofte Water-Wereldt. The chain of islands running along the southern Pacific
was born from the coastline of the austral continent that occupied those seas in earlier maps, combined with the bafflement that "primitive" Pacific islanders could have
reached their homelands without such closely knit islands connecting to continental shores. Colom's was the first published chart on the same scale as contemporary
Portuguese and Spanish manuscript charts. [Martayan Lan, NY]

Indonesian islands, as far east as Bali, and their higher sea floors. America. There is no wide consensus as to exactly where in South-
When the Ice Age ended, the ocean levels rose and the lower east Asia the various waves of emigration originated, nor what was
ground became ocean floor once again, submerging any record the impetus for abandoning their homelands for the uncertain
of the pioneers' coastal civilizations. The land bridges disappeared expanses of the Pacific.
under higher seas, and the people who had ventured to Australia The earliest wave probably began in the second millennium BC,
and Tasmania each evolved independently, cut off from contact originating somewhere in the Indonesian and Philippine islands,
with the rest of the world until modern times. though any of the great river deltas of mainland Southeast Asia
have also been proposed. Characteristic pottery called Lapita is
Human Settlers found in the Bismarck Archipelago, just northeast of New Guinea,
Who were the first seafarers to venture further, into Oceania, and dated to about 1500 BC, and the peoples who created it soon settled
settle its islands? Many theories and nuances have evolved from as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. Anthropologists disagree on the
the considerable research done into this enigma, but it is generally rate of dispersal from this western edge of Polynesia. Some propose
accepted that the Pacific Islanders came predominantly from that no further migration east occurred for some centuries, Lapita
Southeast Asia, the easternmost islands perhaps supplemented culture waning as Polynesian culture developed, while others
with a small number of Amerindians who sailed west from South envision uninterrupted waves of settlers reaching further and
 The Pacific Islands and Their People 17

further east until all the major islands were peopled. The eastern- of hundred kilometers of lush, tropical islands without a clue.
most corners of Oceania were settled relatively recently—the Cook, Tahiti, for example, lay invisible to European eyes until 1767;
Society, and Marquesas Islands perhaps as early as 500-0 BC, and New Caledonia until 1774; and European nations plowed the
from them Hawaii somewhere between AD 200 and 850, and New Pacific for over two and a half centuries before they chanced upon
Zealand between AD 800 and 1200. the Hawaiian chain, despite their lust for discovery and despite
Micronesia was probably settled in two principal waves. The their large vessels and their advanced navigational science.
first occurred about 1500 to 1000 BC, when people from the When European explorers did encounter an inhabited Pacific
Philippines sailed east to the western Micronesian islands, includ- island, some were so baffled to find that "primitive" people had
ing the Marianas, Palau, and possibly Yap. Eastern Micronesia was reached such remote land that various explanations, other than the
settled afterwards, perhaps about 1000 BC, by eastern Melanesians islanders' own industry, were offered. When, in 1595, people in
who went north and reached the Marshall and Kiribati islands. the Marquesas told the Spanish explorer Quiros that they had gone
They, in turn, pushed westward, settling the intermediate islands by canoes to lands to the south inhabited by people of the same
of Micronesia, and eventually reaching the islands that had earlier color of Quiros's black crew member, Quiros thought it nonsense,
been peopled from the Philippines. because he did not believe that they had vessels or expertise capable
Pacific seafarers, of course, did not know in advance what lay of ocean travel. Only a chain of islands loosely connecting archi-
ahead in the open ocean. However, the coastal people of Austro- pelagos, he thought, could explain such an occurrence. Indeed,
nesia inherited a collective subconscious of continuing islands to the enigma of people having settled remote Pacific islands likely
the east, and those who first were compelled to push further toward helped sway some mapmakers to string such a chain of islands
the rising sun probably assumed that more islands lay waiting for from New Guinea to the southeast (Fig. 13). The people of Easter
them. At first, the earth indeed must have seemed like a world of Island, according to their European discoverer Roggeveen, "must
eternal islands. As one sailed east through the equatorial Asian either have been created there [or] brought by another means,
archipelagos, the inventory of homelands must have appeared and these thus preserved their race by procreation." The idea
endless, with the thousands of Indonesian islands leading to that navigation could have placed them there "at the time when
New Guinea, and, in turn, to New Britain, the Solomon Islands, Jerusalem nourished in full power under the rule of King Solomon
Vanuatu (New Hebrides), and New Caledonia. and thereafter under the monarchy of the Romans and other
But east of these archipelagos this predictability began to falter. peoples located in the Mediterranean Sea," he found so ludicrous
The next steps in the push eastward, to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, "that wanting to maintain this would resemble mockery rather
involved a much wider expanse of ocean between islands. And than serious thought."
pushing still further east, the scales vastly increased yet again. The James Cook became well aware that a common underlying
initial landfalls in the Society Islands and Marquesas due east, and language connected far-flung Polynesian peoples, and frequently
subsequently the Hawaiian chain far to the northeast and New expressed his bewilderment at the inescapable implications. Julien
Zealand on the south, involved extraordinarily long stretches of Crozet, who sailed around the southern Pacific at about the same
featureless sea dwarfing any heretofore faced by human wayfarers. time as Cook, theorized that the various Polynesian islands were
Some vessels, however rare an occurrence, probably reached the vestiges of a great continent that sank in massive volcanic erup-
western shores of America. tions, leaving only its highest peaks above water; the Pacific
Islanders had not traveled to their homelands, but rather been
The European Record stranded on them. Similarly, Thomas Pennant wrote, in 1800,
Stars provided navigators with guidance to return to known islands, that "those who consult the map of this portion of the globe will
particularly within a narrow breadth of latitude. But the search for instantly perceive the effect of the rapid discharge of the waters
new islands would have been largely one of chance, no matter how after the destruction of the old world by the deluge, aided by
cunning a navigator's ability to glean extremely subtle indications volcanic fury ... we do not know the antecedent form, but it was
of land from patterns of waves, clouds, birds, fish, and ocean debris. evidently shattered by that great event." Quiros and Crozet's
Scattered, low-lying islands were especially difficult. Since the eye's hypotheses were reasonable, and surely the idea that people lack-
perspective from the islanders' canoes was virtually sea level, atolls ing large ships and sophisticated equipment had traversed such
would have been invisible to the Pacific navigators until nearly expanse of ocean must have seemed a radical proposal in contrast.
upon them. It was already difficult from a European vessel: when, The mystery "hath already exercised the abilities of the ingenious,"
in 1817, Otto von Kotzebue left the eastern, Radak group of the Henry Wilson, shipwrecked in Palau in the latter eighteenth
Marshalls for the Aleutian Islands, he sailed through the western, century, summarized.
Ralik chain without sighting any of its isles.
The European experience amply demonstrates the improb- Pacific Settlement: Deliberate or Accidental?
ability of chancing upon land in the mid-Pacific. While mariners What motivated Pacific Islanders, relying only on their skill
sailing the westernmost Pacific could hardly avoid encountering and courage, to sail in small craft into the unknown expanses of
numerous islands, they routinely traversed the central and eastern the seas? Scholars have generally pursued two theories, one that
regions without any significant sighting of land whatsoever. the Pacific Islanders' migrations were the result of mishap, the
Captain after captain, though desperate to sight land where food, other that they were the fruit of purposeful, planned exploration.
water, and sailors' health could be regained, sailed within a couple Both theories are surely correct.
18 Early Mapping of the Pacific

DOUBLE PIROGUE DES II.ES DES AM1S.

Fig. 14. A double canoe of Tonga as seen by the d'Entrecasteaux expedition in 1793 and drawn by Nicolas Piron (Paris, 1800). [Antipodean Books, Maps and Prints]

The theory of accidental odysseys envisions Pacific seafarers Another Guaytopo vessel with two hulls (a double canoe) had
being cast adrift from storm, faulty navigation, or overnight pilot- reached Chicayana with fully 110 people. In both instances, the
ing forfeited by unexpected clouds. Winds and currents would Melanesian man, whom the Spaniards called Pedro, was struck by
commandeer the vessel until a chance encounter with a new island, their exoticism, unfamiliar canoes, and the fair, handsome girls
or until reaching within sufficient proximity that a savvy pilot with strange clothing, these differences all suggesting the arrival
could discern signs in the seas indicating that it lay nearby. of people from some distance.
Such an encounter would have been highly dependent upon the The plight of one lostTuamotu fleet is documented in 1821.
quirks of the particular storm, as scholars have demonstrated that Three vessels with 150 people left the atoll of Anaa to greet the
the prevailing winds and ocean currents would not escort a craft new king in Tahiti. The Anaa-Tahiti shuttle appears to have been a
from the more westerly islands to the archipelagos of the central relatively common voyage, the navigator lining up his canoe on the
Pacific. Further, people cast adrift while on a routine excur-sion sand straight for Matavia Point on Tahiti. Launching the craft at
would doubtfully have taken with them sufficient supplies to sunset with eyes fixed on the first bright star on the western horizon,
survive many days' wanderings. The instance in which a lost vessel a succession of stars would appear throughout the night, a living
reached a new inhabitable island with its passengers alive must chart to illuminate the course to those privy to its hard-won secrets.
have been rare indeed, one lucky canoe for the many lost to the Two days into the voyage, a gale separated the fleet and drove it
anonymity of the Pacific floor. back. One vessel, a 30-foot double canoe, reclaimed its course but
In the Duff Island of Taumako (Melanesia) in 1605, Quiros was then greeted by another storm which sent it far into windless
learned from an islander of what may have been an unplanned seas, where it was becalmed for more than a week under the hot,
Polynesian migration. The man, himself not native to Taumako, rainless sky. The two weeks' provisions were soon exhausted, and
explained that fair-skinned (that is, Polynesian) people from of the 48 people on this vessel—23 men, 15 women, and 10
"Guaytopo" had set out for an island called Mecayeayla but that children—17 died. Eventually, rain and a catch of three sharks
contrary winds blew them far away, ultimately putting them ashore sustained them until sighting an uninhabited island, where for ten
at Taumako. The women wore a translucent blue-black garment months they prepared to attempt the return voyage. This island was
which they called a foa foa, apparently a garment made from tapa. Vanavana, about 800 kilometers to the southeast of their home
 The Pacific Islands and Their People 19

POLYNESIANS.

Screw-pine. Coco-palms. Boat, with Outriggers, being freighted with Copra. Coral-reef.
Ooeo-nuts. Lighting a Fire. Chimp of Banana-trees. Catching Sea-animals daring low water.
"Wooden supports for the head Kava-bowl
whilst sleeping. and drinking cups.

Fig. 15. "Polynesians." A late nineteenth-century impression of daily life. Lithograph.

island of Anaa and roughly twice the distance they would have of people of both sexes. Moreover, the new land's indigenous
sailed to Tahiti. Their canoe was then damaged attempting to land commodities, along with whatever happened to be in the canoe,
at another island, resulting in another eight months' delay while would have had to have been adequate to establish a new civil-
the vessel was repaired and stockpiled with dried fish and pandanus ization. Indeed, despite our imagery of lush Pacific islands with
cakes. Before they left, the British explorer Frederick William a gentle environment and a seemingly limitless bounty of food,
Beechey happened across the wayfarers, rescuing one of the canoe's newcomers cast onto a typical uninhabited Pacific island, particu-
families (his ship had no room for the rest) and getting word to larly the lower, smaller atolls, would have initially faced a vicious
Tahiti for a rescue of the others. challenge for mere survival. Many of the plants and fauna we
James Cook noted the likelihood of chance dispersal of people associate with such islands were imported by their early inhabit-
when visiting Tonga in 1777. He explained that the islanders rely ants, and to believe that the islands afforded their earliest human
on the position of the sun and stars to navigate, and solely on the occupants an easy life would be to trivialize their accomplishments.
direction of the winds and waves when those celestial guides are The theory of deliberate, planned migrations raises the
obscured; but if with overcast sky the winds and waves should shift, question—why? Why would islanders have undertaken such
"they are then bewildered, frequently miss their intended port, and difficult and dangerous displacements? Exploration for its own
are never heard of more." However, the islanders' stories of their sake was not a likely motivation of Pacific Islanders. And there is
people being driven to other islands "leads us to infer, that those no indication that religion, a paramount incentive in European
not heard of, are not always lost." exploration, had any role whatsoever in the voyages of Pacific
While lost seafarers reaching inhabited islands would need only Islanders, either for proselytizing or religious freedom. Nor does
the indulgence of the island's people, those reaching an uninhab- the quest for wealth (beyond a livable food supply) appear to have
ited island would have had to be carrying a sufficient number driven Pacific Islanders as it did Europeans.
20 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 16. View at Pohnpei, as seen by Frederic Lutke in 1828. Note the similarity of their mien with that of their descendants in Fig. 17. From Liitke's Voyage, 1836.

Rather, wars and overpopulation are the most likely moti- those histories, irrevocably interrupting their transmission from
vations. Islanders were squeezed from their homelands by wars, one generation to the next.
whether internal or from new waves of immigrants, and from One of the more intact of surviving Pacific oral histories comes
the population growing beyond what the islands' resources could from Pohnpei, a Caroline island, which was not the site of signifi-
sustain. In contrast to accidental voyages, deliberate colonizers cant European presence until the nineteenth century. The account
likely planned a return voyage home to transport more people, was left us by a Pohnpeian man named Luelen Bernart, who placed
plants, and livestock to seed their new colony with confidence. his birth year at 1866, about twenty years before the first mission-
aries arrived. In 1934, having been taught to write, he set to paper
Cosmology his island's history as he knew it. No island's oral tradition was
Subsequent migrations eastward into islands already inhabited monolithic; other Pohnpeians recited varying histories, and Lue-
would have produced gradually lessening ripples of further migra- len's story entwining Christian strands makes clear that his was not
tions by newly displaced peoples. Immigrants assimilated into entirely "authentic." Nonetheless, the text comes as close as we have
other islands' populations would add to natural population increase to a Pacific civilization's own history, revealing several independent
until the new island, in turn, could not support more people. migrations, some of which were deliberate and repeated.
Polynesian legend records various invaders from the west: Papua It begins by relating how in olden times a man named Japkini,
New Guineans invaded the Carolines, Tongans invaded the Society on the shores of a far-off land, made a canoe that was large and
Islands, and there is a record of Marquesas Islanders fleeing seaward deep, that would be sufficient for many people to ride in. A woman
to escape an invading army, perceiving that their small chance of named Lipalikini hewed out the hollow of the canoe, while an-
survival to a new home was greater than the chance of survival other, Lijapikini, carved its designs and made the outrigger, and a
against the conquerors. When the Europeans arrived, they stepped third, Litorkini, made thread from the fiber of the outer layers of
into this kaleidoscope of deliberate and accidental migration. the trunk of banana trees, then wove a sail from the thread.
Pacific peoples had no written languages; histories were passed The Pohnpeians envisioned the sky as the eaves of a house
orally. Regrettably, those histories were never preserved in writing (which on a Pohnpeian house extend quite close to the ground). If
very early into post-European contact. Within a matter of two or people went past the sky's "eaves," they would find that there was
three decades, the effects of conquerors and missionaries corrupted a new land there. Thus, Japkini gathered together the people who
 The Pacific Islands and Their People 21

wanted to go forth with him to hunt for Kitoroilan Tapuaijo, the

"eaves of Heaven," where the underside of heaven comes down
nearly to touch the earth. The men and women who made the
journey seemed symbolically to become the canoe itself, their
names becoming the Pohnpeian names of the parts of the canoe.
Sailing forth, two women secured wind for their sails, whose
brightness calmed the sea. The people humbly greeted an octopus
they met in the ocean. "Who are you people in this canoe?" the
octopus asked. "I am Japkini," the man replied, "who is looking
about for land, and now I would like you to teach me things....
What is your name, and where do you live?" to which the octopus
replied, "I am Litakika who lives on a submerged reef which ex-
tends from the West to the East." Traveling far, they discovered
the reef of which the octopus had spoken. An exposed part of the
reef with a bit of coral, but no vegetation, was named the Lagoon of
Life, while the reef was named Above the Lagoon of Life.
Now we find another symbolic transition. Whereas earlier
the canoe's parts had assumed the names of the travelers, now the
canoe itself "spanned the bit of coral." The canoe, it seems, became
the new homeland.
They built up the land, spread it out to make a level place, and
called for Katinanik, the mangrove, to protect the land from the
waves. Since the open sea was close to the edge of the land, they
also called Katenenior, the barrier reef, to surround the land. Two
women made a large platform of earth to which they gave the name
of Pei (Stone Structure) and everything that was on top of this rock
they called Pohnpei, "On the Stone Structure."
Now wanting to return to the land from which they had come, Fig. 17. Children on Pohnpei, Caroline Islands. [Photograph by Thomas Suarez,
1974] Overleaf. Fig. 18. Pacific Ocean, Antonio Sanches, from Idrographisiae
they put some soil in the canoe to sustain some plants that would Nova Descriptio, 1641. [The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek]
provide food during the long voyage. A man and woman stayed
behind, but their descendants were more ignorant, and they be-
came naked, for they had nothing with which to make clothes. the European countries to have a distinct atmosphere, enclosed in
A second voyage arrived. The captain and his wife helped scoop the same manner as they thought the heavens surrounded their
more earth onto the stone structure. But there were no houses, and own islands. "Hence they spoke of foreigners as those who came
for a long time they lived under rocks. When a third voyage came, from behind the sky." The islanders' traditions and songs, Ellis
the new people made houses, but without thatching for there was observed, recorded the names of other Polynesian archipelagos.
not yet much vegetation. A man who came on a fourth voyage Did Pacific Islanders use maps to assist them in their form-
propagated the ivory nut palm and provided thatch for the houses. idable voyages? Any discussion of indigenous Pacific cartography,
Then the original canoe came back to bring the original woman indeed of any non-Western cartography, unavoidably leads to
home, but she no longer wanted to leave. People and land propa- confronting the definition of "map." While the abstraction of
gated, and the people made clothes out of leaves. But there were geographic features and cosmographic concepts appears to be
two kinds of people, humans and cannibals, the latter very cruel universally human, the common Western notions of a map, with its
with no love in them. Although they multiplied in Pohnpei, the implicit sense of empirical geographic accuracy, were not. In the
humans always got rid of them. southwest Pacific, the historical record has left us little with which
The land grew much larger and higher, and the inhabitants to reconstruct what its peoples' cartographic tradition might have
were better off, had more food, and used breadfruit bark to make been. There is no knowledge of pre-modern, non-cosmographic
clothes. More voyages came, each with its contributions. mapping from the Philippines, barely more than scant textual
reference of it from the Indonesian islands, and none from the
Indigenous Maps people of Australia, Tasmania, or New Guinea. This is not to
Elements of this Micronesian cosmology were probably typical in suggest that they did not make geographic maps. Rather, theirs
Oceania. Polynesians, according to the missionary William Ellis, were ephemeral, for example of shells, stones, and leaves arranged
resident in Polynesia between 1817 and 1825, "imagined that the upon the sand to replicate island or interior locations.
sea which surrounded their islands was a level plane, and that at Knots tied in a cord as a pneumonic to follow and memorize
the visible horizon, or some distance beyond it, the sky, or rai, geographic features was likely a common practice throughout
joined the ocean, enclosing as with an arch, or hollow cone, the Oceania. When George Robertson, sailing master on the maiden
islands in the immediate vicinity." Ellis wrote that they imagined European encounter with Tahiti (1767), showed aTahitian man
24 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 19. View in New Ireland, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. [Donald A. Heald]

around their vessel, he "observed every Joint in the Chairs and actually represented geographic regions or spirit worlds.
Tables, and measured the length and breadth of every Joint of our Cartographic metaphors are also known in the Pacific Islands.
Chairs and the Gun-room table, and marked his measures on a Among the ways the Caroline Islanders mapped their archipelago
piece of Line, which he brought with him." Robertson realized that was in the rough diamond shape of a triggerfish, the head of the
the man was making different knots for length and breadth, and fish always representing east. This cartographic device, the "great
that this method would allow him to reconstruct the furniture. triggerfish," is composed of one, two, or many such diamonds, one
La Perouse had the same experience with the people of Easter above the other, their points and intersections representing islands.
Island (see page 169 below), and when a Palauan boy accompanied Imagery of "literal" cartographic abstraction is found in a myth
Captain Henry Wilson to England in late 1783, he was "extremely recorded in the Caroline Islands, in which the world is seen from
desirous of knowing the name and country of every ship he met at above, as if a natural "map." One morning on Pulap Atoll, Ino-
sea," and made a knot in a line to correspond to each country as sagur, the daughter of the chief and Spirit Sagur, was bathing in
he committed the new names to memory. the lagoon in front of the canoe house when a rainbow appeared
Various abstract representations and allegories were used by and became the spirit Anumwerici. To keep this spirit from de-
Melanesian peoples, and although these may justly be considered vouring the people of Pulap, Inosagur prepared two coconut
cosmographical maps, they do not fit into the scope of this book. vessels, one with taro, the other with water, and presented them
Many cartographic compositions of Pacific people, such as draw- to Anumwerici. Although the hungry spirit balked at the meager
ings of huts in a village, of the sequence of a hunt, of the arrange- offering, Inosagur immediately replenished the two vessels every
ment in a canoe, or the formation of people in a battalion, straddle time he consumed their contents. He ate and drank until entirely
the line between the cartographic and the pictorial. Others cross free from want. To thank the girl, the rainbow-spirit taught her
into the metaphysical, such as spacial concepts associated with navigation. He put her atop a small coconut tree and caused it to
genealogies, bones of animals arranged according to the direction grow taller and taller until it pierced through the clouds. From this
from which each animal was slain, or gifts that illuminate social perch, Inosagur was now able to survey all the islands, reefs, shoals,
stratification and associations. Such metaphysical "mapping" and the creatures in the sea, as if beholding a "map" of the world.
took many forms. In Borneo, for example, pigs' livers were read She carefully memorized the stars under which every feature lay,
for divination, and in some cases the lobes of the ventral side and then Anumwerici had the tree gently return to its original size
 The Pacific Islands and Their People 25

and set Inosagur on the beach. Inosagur's new-found knowledge European explorers invariably drew from native sources for
begot two schools of navigation. When she had her first son, she guiding them to new shores, and ultimately in their mapping of
passed on the art of navigation directly to him. He, in turn, later Pacific archipelagos. Early mapping of the Caroline Islands, for
taught the art to his younger brother. example, is heavily indebted to indigenous information, gleaned
Frederic Liitke, while in the Caroline Islands 1827-8, recorded from islanders cast onto shores where Europeans had settled. Upon
seeing maps in the form of tattoos. Some islanders' "legs and chest being asked about the geography of their homelands, the islanders
are covered with long straight lines which at first look like striped typically arranged stones or shells on the ground, then related
stockings. They trace the outline of several small fish on their distances in sailing time rather than linear distance.
hands, each about an inch long. It is strange to note that these fig- Travel time was the only measure that islanders could ascertain
ures bear the names of various islands. Peseng [one of the islanders], with certainty, and indeed the only gauge of distance that mattered
on his left thigh, above the knee, had a certain number of these fish to their lives. Invariably, islanders would tell the Europeans the
as well as hooks, which represented Lougounor and the neighbor- number and names of their islands, their orientation in relation
ing island groups; in addition, each line on his legs and hands was to each other, and the travel time between them and around them.
identified with the name of an island, from Faounoupei as far as Europeans found themselves converting travel time into miles.
Pelly. Having accounted for all these islands, there were still a few Some Society Islanders with limited European contact drew
lines left which he called Manila, Ouon [Guam], Saipan, etc.; and maps in the European sense, at European request. The most famous
as there were still a few lines left, he named them, chuckling as he is that made by the Tahitian navigator and priest from Raiatea,
went, Ingres [England], Roussia, etc. Perhaps this practice had been Tupaia, for James Cook in 1769 (Fig. 141). In Tonga on his third
introduced to more easily recall the islands of their archipelago. It voyage, Cook learned the distance to Fiji in terms of the number
is a type of geographic rosary ... women tattoo themselves in a very of days it took theTongans to sail there. Hoping to better estimate
tasteful manner in places covered by their tol? the word tol, coin- the linear distance between the two islands, he made several trials
cidentally, being the name of an islet in the southwestern part of with a Tongan sailor under moderate winds and calculated, based
Chuuk, visible on the d'Urville map in Fig. 190. on theTongans' sailing day often to twelve hours, the approximate
Actual navigational tools are found with the "stick charts" distance by which to multiply the Tongans' figures.
of the Marshall Islanders (Fig. 11). These unique cartographic Whereas the Europeans correlated stars to a particular moment
devices varied widely. Made for the benefit of their creator and in time to determine position, the islanders observed a succession
his apprentices, no wide standardization evolved. They were not of stars, rising on one horizon and disappearing on the opposite, to
known to the West until the latter part of the nineteenth century. ascertain the direction of their goal. The Europeans' use of the
Three general types of stick charts have been noted. One, called compass and other navigation equipment, combined with the vast
a mattang, is not geographic, but rather a device to illustrate the distances they wished to travel, made the "fixed star" approach far
manner in which islands cause interference patterns on the swells better for them. The "moving star" methodology was well suited for
of the sea. The ability to "read" these subtle artefacts of the sea, the Pacific Islanders, who lacked the compass and generally sailed
allowing navigators to "see" where islands lay when none were in within a narrow latitudinal breadth.
sight, was especially important to the Marshallese because of their
islands' extremely low elevation. Pacific Regions
Another type of stick chart, the rebhelih, mapped the principal We can divide the Pacific into three major parts. Everything west
islands of one or both chains of the Marshalls, the Ratak and Ralik. of New Guinea, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, and
The third type, the meddo, is of a larger scale, mapping one section Taiwan, are considered the Asian-Pacific islands. To the south of
of one of the chains. Both the rebhelib and meddo can include such New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania comprise their own distinct
information as wave patterns, the direction of ocean swells, and part. Everything from New Guinea and east is Oceania.
the distance from which an island can be seen from a canoe. Islands Oceania is, in turn, commonly divided into three. In 1756,
are symbolized by shells, or simply by the intersection of the wood Charles de Brosses coined the term "Polynesia" to denote all islands
strips (typically the midribs of coconut fronds) from which the of Oceania, but that single blanket term soon became inadequate.
chart was constructed. Thus the explorer Dumont d'Urville, at a lecture at the Geograph-
Yet even these specialized aids were doubtfully taken aboard the ical Society in Paris in 1831, proposed using "Micronesia" for the
vessel. The islanders' navigational "map," rather, was an intricate many small islands sitting generally north of the equator in the
knowledge of the meaning to be gleaned from subtle signs in the central and western Pacific; "Melanesia" for the larger, generally
seas and skies. Many generations' experience gelled into a masterful volcanic islands whose people tend to be of dark complexion, and
interpretation of patterns—wave patterns, swell patterns, cloud de Brosses's "Polynesia" for the remaining varied islands stretching
patterns, and star paths. Song could help memorize the names and as far as Easter Island and Hawaii. Like all simplifications, this
sequence of islands.They knew how to interpret the flight of island- system is flawed but useful. Although the terminology is incon-
bound birds while ignoring the paths of migratory birds. They sistent in that "Melanesia" technically refers to islanders' physical
could focus on a sea's ripples and discern whether they had recently traits while "Micronesia" and "Polynesia" refer to the land itself,
passed around an island. Even a phosphorescent hue seen under physical traits are closely associated with all three, Micronesians
water, and the reflection of sand and lagoon water on the horizon, being generally smaller, like their islands, and Polynesians being
could have been meaningful to the Pacific navigator. well built and the most similar to Europeans.
Chapter 2
Mariners, Mapmakers, and
the Great Ocean

Seafarers from the Pacific Rim were the true discovers of the
Pacific, and in whatever manner and media were the first to map
its seas and islands. Theirs was an ocean of indefinite boundaries,
its geographic imagery gradually blurring with distance from their
own island. For the more isolated peoples of the Pacific, such as the
Easter Islanders, generations may have passed with only inherited
memories of other shores.
Who were the first outsiders to follow in their paths, then
return to tell their story and leave some cartographic record? When
did the concept of the Pacific as an autonomous ocean, with an
awareness of its defining perimeter, arise?
Theories have been touted of ancient trans-Pacific voyages by
Asian or Classical navigators. While it is not inconceivable that
such odysseys occurred, the theories proposing them rely heavily
on selective evidence, supposition, and circular reasoning. Regard-
less of their truth or fancy, these purported voyages did sometimes
affect the mapping of the Pacific. Particularly influential was a
record from Classical Mediterranean civilization of such a voyage,
which had a dramatic effect on the mapping of the Pacific at the
hands of Renaissance geographers (see page 36 below).
Ancient Javan pilots were masters at sea, plying Indonesian
waters and making round trips as far as Madagascar. Philippine
sailors traded at least as far as western Malaya. Yet, although
Chinese textual evidence records some sort of Javanese geographic
map in the late thirteenth century, no early Javan map is extant,
and no early Philippine map is known whatsoever.
No early Chinese maps extend further east than Chinas seas,
Fig. 20. "Map of the guiding stars" for the voyage from Ceylon to Kuala Pasai in and theories of early Chinese voyages across the Pacific—notably
Sumatra, from the Wubeizhi by Mao Yuanji. Dated 1621 in the preface, the book
the oft-cited voyage of Hwui Shin to America in the late fifth
was presented to the throne in 1628. Although Mao does not cite the source of the
maps, there is little question that they are based predominantly on Zheng's voy- century—have little substance. Not that they are impossible—
ages. "His maps," Mao states, "record carefully and correctly the distances of the evidence of Asian influence in Amerindian civilization, and the
road and the various countries and I have inserted them for the information of
posterity and as a memento of [his] military achievements." In the Treatise, Mao
supposed discovery of Chinese artefacts in America, has been
explains that maps and information were collected before each voyage, and that noted—but there is no evidence of a Chinese vessel having crossed
"on repeated voyages, [one] compares and corrects the charts of compass bearings the Pacific and returned to have had any influence on the Chinese
and guiding stars, and a copy of [the] drawing of the configuration of islands,
water bodies, and the land." Some idea of Chinese contact with the westernmost
world view, despite the retrospective influence in Fig. 21.
Pacific islands is preserved in two texts, one written in 1178 by Chou Ch'ii-fei, A Chinese navigator named Hsu Fu is said to have reached a
an official of the maritime province of Kuang-hsi, the second in 1226 by Chao Ju- P'eng-lai Island on a voyage of 219 BC—perhaps Japan, if the tale
kua, Commissioner of Foreign Trade at Ch'iian-chou (coastal province of Fukien).
The latter describes "the great Encircling Ocean" with such islands as Sumatra, is not a myth—where he met with various magicians and officials.
Java, and the Philippines, based on interviews with sailors. [Library of Congress] Back in China, he received permission from the emperor to return
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 27

Fig. 2 1 . The North Pacific, Antonio Zatta, 1776. Various misunderstood or mythical reports about the northern Pacific shores are combined, including the belief that
Chinese mariners colonized America in the late fifth century. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]

to P'eng-lai with colonists. He was never heard from again. is no substantive evidence to suggest that Zheng sailed further into
In AD 499, a Chinese historian named Li-yan-tcheou recorded the Pacific than the Philippines and Java. His adventures were
the claim by a Buddhist priest, Hwui Shin, that he had sailed far to focused on the Asian and African coasts of the Indian Ocean.
the east to Fu-sang, a country which has been dubiously equated Maps associated with Zheng He's adventures, the Wubei zhi charts,
with America, anywhere from Oregon to Mexico. Hwui Shin's were printed in a work entitled Wubei zhi (Treatise on Military
journey purportedly took him first to Japan, thence northward Preparations) completed by Mao Yuanji about 1621 (Fig. 20).
to a place called Wen-shin, next eastward to Ta-han, and then a Chinese entrepreneurs were traditionally more adventurous
formidable voyage to the shores of Fu-sang. Fu-sang took its name than their officialdom, taking them into the western Pacific for
from a plant that sprouts like bamboo, the fruit of which was said centuries before Zheng He. The extant geographies, however, re-
to resemble the pear, and the bark of which was made into cloth. cord nothing further east than Japan and insular Southeast Asia.
"Proof" of this early Chinese presence in the New World can Japanese traders were active in Southeast Asian waters from
be found on European maps more than a millennium later. Several about the fifteenth century, though the earliest surviving Japanese
eighteenth-century works record the ancient Chinese settlement charts of foreign shores show Western influence. Early Thai geo-
which Zatta (Fig. 21) marks as Fou-Sang, "colony of the Chinese," graphic maps showing the western Pacific are also Western-
in about the position of Vancouver, British Columbia. Such map- influenced, their data having been assimilated from the substantial
pings of the ancient Chinese colony reflect the whims of data- European presence in Ayutthaya which lasted until the expulsion
hungry mapmakers and have no bearing on the historical question. of most foreigners in the Siamese Revolution of 1688.
Similar claims have also been made about Zheng He (Cheng Early Arabic seafarers were well acquainted with the China Sea,
Ho), who commanded several voyages between 1405 and 1433, and by the tenth century had amassed geographic treatises and
the only ambitious state-sponsored Chinese expeditions. But there lexicons, pilot books, and herbal treatises that detailed geographic
28 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Early Cartographic Traces

No early chart constructed from the empirical knowledge of Arab
navigators is known. But a map used onboard in actual navigation
stood only a tiny fraction of the odds of survival to our day as com-
pared to its academic brethren, and only a small number of the
latter have survived, most of them being later copies. Thus, this
absence of Arab pilots' charts does not mean that none were made.
The only extant early Arab maps to show the southwest Pacific are
the work of academics sifting through a menagerie of data, much
of it already archaic before reaching their desks.
The concept of an encircling "river ocean" was common in
Classical geography, and medieval European mappaemundi often
depicted an ocean sea surrounding the continental whole. Islands
were frequently placed in this surrounding ocean sea, mostly
based on medieval lore. The woodcut in Fig. 24 is a fragment of a
fifteenth-century calendar showing the waters of the encircling rivei
ocean and its islands. In the Turkish map in Fig. 3, we see the earth
ringed by an encircling ocean, and also resting on the "ocean" of
the firmament. Variations on this common theme are found in Jain
cosmography (Fig. 22), which sometimes placed a series of oceans
surrounding the earth, and Buddhist cosmography, in which the
universe pivots around a central sea.
Fig. 22. Manusyaloka (The Human World), Western Rajasthan, late nineteenth
century. Rather than a single encircling ocean sea, in this Jain world map the earth The Pacific was "mapped" conceptually by Ambrosius Theo-
is surrounded by a series of concentric oceans through which people and fish swim. dosius Macrobius, a geographer, astronomer, and philosopher who
Jainism, founded by Vardhamana Mahavira in the sixth century BC, developed
geography and cosmography distinct from that of Hinduism or Buddhism.
flourished ca. AD 399-423, and whose ideas in turn were borrowed
[Library of Congress] from Crates of Mallos, who lived in Asia Minor (Turkey) in the
mid-second century BC (Fig. 71). Macrobius envisioned a spherical
earth divided into four roughly equal quadrants, each with a conti-
nent. Europe, Asia, and Africa (which was envisioned as lying
entirely north of the equator) comprised one of these continents.
A second occupied the southern hemisphere of the same meridians;
and the remaining two were likewise positioned in the northern
and southern sections of the "other" side of the planet, what we
would now call the Western Hemisphere. Although Macrobius,
of course, knew nothing of the Americas, his concept formed a
hypothetical, autonomous "Pacific" ocean belt. An aesthetic and
philosophic construct, the planet's landmasses were balanced.
Another continent cited by Classical geographers which simi-
larly partitioned the ocean into two, thus creating the "Pacific,"
was the continent of Atlantis, described by Plato ca. 400 BC. The
discovery of America led some Renaissance geographers to revive
the theory of Atlantis, identifying Columbus's shores with the lost
continent. Sebastian Minister proposed this in earnest by way of
a brief inscription in South America in his map of 1540 (Fig. 43),
and some French geographers of the latter seventeenth century
Fig. 23. Islamic map depicting the world surrounded by a wide, encircling ocean, devoted maps of America to the theory that America and Atlantis
with Mecca and Medina at the center. Umar bin Muzaffar Ibn al-Wardi, Kharidat were one and the same.
al-'Ajaib wa Faridat al-Gharaib (The Pearl of Wonders and the Uniqueness of
Things Strange), late seventeenth century. [Library of Congress] Long before Europeans ventured into the Pacific, it took on
poetic significance through the pen of the Florentine poet Dante
(1265-1321). Dante believed that antipodal to Jerusalem lay a
sources for medicinal ingredients. Arab navigators relied more on mountain whose summit was Paradise, and whose lower section
pilot books than charts. Many of the numerous Indonesian and was Purgatory—this spot, unknown to Dante, lying in the south
Philippine islands catalogued in the pilot books cannot now be Pacific Ocean, south of Tahiti and the Marquesas. This dichotomy
identified with certainty, and thus the eastern periphery of early between Paradise and Purgatory gained new meaning unimaginable
Arab knowledge of the Pacific is unclear. That limit, however, to Dante when, in the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
doubtfully extended beyond the Moluccas or Banda Sea. turies, intellectuals and romanticists saw Polynesian society as a
 Mariners, Map-makers, and the Great Ocean 29

Fig. 24. A fragment of a calendar mappamundi probably dating from the fifteenth century, showing two islands in the encircling ocean sea and neighboring continental
land. From medieval lore we see a man with a single large foot, and another with the head of a dog, both of which were commonly associated with the East.

human paradise, the triumph of the Noble Savage over the hypo- Verde Islands. The central "Pacific" is home to the mythical island
crisy and discontent of European civilization, while others condem- of St. Brendan, the purported home of a seafaring Irish monk who
ned the same peoples as the incarnations of sin itself. "Antipodal according to legend roamed the seas in search of an Isle of the
to Jerusalem" would indeed become both Paradise and Purgatory. Blessed. A map believed to have been given by the Florentine
cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli to Columbus would have been
The Discovery of America Defines the Pacific similar, and such was the ocean Columbus thought he was crossing
The "Pacific" Ocean in its earliest sense comprised the waters when he sailed from Spain in August of 1492.
between Asia and Europe, an idea implicit with a spherical earth. Islands in similar location had, in fact, by Columbus's time
The concept of a spherical earth dates back to Classical times, and already been placed empirically on the map. The Portuguese
contrary to widely held myth did not disappear with the "Dark" discovery of the Azores by the second quarter of the fifteenth
and Middle Ages. Medieval mappaemundi depicted the western-
Overleaf. Fig. 25. The hybrid Caribbean/China Sea, a detail from the world
most Pacific with some Austronesian islands derived from Arabic map of Johann Ruysch, 1507. Unlike the Waldseemiiller map of the same year
data and from such European pioneers as Marco Polo, Friar (Fig. 28), Ruysch envisioned South America as an autonomous landmass but
Odoric, and, on fifteenth-century maps, Nicolo de' Conti. Their North America as an easterly promontory of Asia, placing Columbus's islands in
the China Sea. Frustrated that Japan and Hispaniola (spagnola) appeared to lie
makers, if not always their audience, likely envisioned the earth as in exactly the same spot, Ruysch concludes that they are one and the same. He
a sphere. But only globes would actually require a mapmaker to explains his dilemma in the inscription to the right of the island: "M Polo says
that 1500 miles to the east of the port of Zaiton [China] there is a very large
confront the full expanse of sea between Asia and Europe/Africa,
island named Sipagu [Japan] ... but as the islands discovered by the Spaniards
and it is with a globe that we first see the ocean mapped as an occupy this spot, we do not dare to locate it here ... being of the opinion that
autonomous body. Although globes were being constructed at least what the Spaniards call Spagnola is really Sipagu." He notes that Polo's descrip-
tion of Japan matched the Spanish description of Hispaniola, "except for the
as early as the thirteenth century (their manufacture is described
idolatry" of its people. Cuba fell to even greater confusion. Since Columbus
by Giovanni Campano ca. 1261-64), the earliest which is extant originally claimed that Cuba was continental, and since it lay even closer to the
is that of Martin Behaim, 1492. perceived Asian coast, Ruysch first mapped Cuba as a long peninsula jutting
eastward ("down" because of the map's curved longitudes) from China. No
Behaim's conception of the waters between Europe/Africa and example of the map in this state is extant, but it can be reconstructed from era-
Asia was typical of late fifteenth-century geographic thought, sures in the engraved plate. Subsequent reports that Cuba was indeed an island
placing a series of islands off the Asian coast, including Japan, the led Ruysch to sever the peninsula from the main, leave only the easternmost tip,
remove the "Cuba" label, and leave its western shores ambiguous. The ribbon
"Cathay" (China) islands, and various Southeast Asian isles. In the substituting for its western coast, a mapmaker's "fig leaf" to conceal the
eastern part of the ocean he placed the Azores, Canaries, and Cape unknown, simply states that the ships of Spain have reached this far.
30 Early Mapping of the Pacific
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 31

Columbus's discovery of America threw the status of the

Atlantic into dispute. The Genoese explorer originally claimed to
have succeeded in reaching the Orient. Caribbean shores encoun-
tered during his first two voyages were said to be Asian islands, and
Cuba perhaps a part of the Asian mainland. But in 1498, skirting
a newly discovered landmass, he encountered a river which dis-
charged such an enormous volume of water into the sea that he
deemed the land to be an unknown continent. The river was prob-
ably the Orinoco, and the land was, of course, South America.
Although the region to the north was envisioned as only islands
rather than a North American continent, the ocean's partitioning
into the Atlantic and Pacific had begun. This brief transitional stage
is seen in the meticulously conceived world map of Johann Ruysch
of 1507, on the map of Zorzi/Columbus (Fig. 27), and is still
found as late as 1528 on the rough map of Pietro Coppo.
Continuing encounters with the Caribbean islands showed that
they bore little resemblance to the Indies described by Marco Polo.
Landfalls in Central America, as well as probable encounters with
Florida before its recorded European discovery by Ponce de Leon in
1513, led to the theory that these new, closely knit discoveries were,
in fact, all part of a heretofore unknown, fourth part of the globe.
This belief was given life in 1507 when a group of humanists,
among them the geographer Martin Waldseemuller, met in St. Die
Fig. 26. Hemisphere, Johann Schoner, 1515. The "strait" through America into
under the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine. Waldseemuller sifted
the Pacific is probably the Rio de la Plata. Note the entirely coincidental similarity
of the landmass in the southwest Pacific to eastern Australia. through geographic data garnered from recent voyages and pro-
duced a radical, brilliant map of the world which laid down the
elementary outlines and position of America, and rendered both
century, if seemingly a modest prize in today's world, provided North and South America as separate landmasses from Asia, thus
a foothold from which to launch new voyages in search of more clearly partitioning into two the waters between Europe and Asia
islands and, so they thought, the Orient. That search, continued (Fig. 28). This was the true cartographic birth of the Pacific Ocean.
under the Spanish flag after Portugal diverted her resources to Waldseemuller splits his map's cordiform through the Pacific,
reaching the Orient via Africa, led to the discovery of America with the large island at the 2:00 position being Japan. The waters
and thus the genesis of the "true" Pacific. between Asia and America are labeled as the "eastern" ocean, and

Fig. 27. A. Zorzi /B. Columbus, 1506-22. Because of its latitude, Cattigara (lower left) would soon be transplanted from Southeast Asia to Peru {Mondo Novo).
32 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 28. Waldseemiiller, 1507. One of the greatest achievements in Renaissance mapmaking, this map was the first to depict the New World as an autonomous landmass
of continental proportions, and thus the first to separate the sea between Asia and Europe into two distinct oceans. The profusion of islands in the Pacific, including Japan
in the upper right, were inherited from late fifteenth-century models. America was envisioned as extending about as far south as Africa, an opinion Waldseemiiller made
more evident in a globe of the same date. W h e n explorers searching for a route into the Pacific found the Rio de la Plata, which by coincidence lies at about that latitude,
its vast mouth was likely interpreted as a strait, thus creating the pre-Magellan waterway to the Pacific mapped by such scholars as Schoner (Fig. 26). [From a facsimile]
Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 33
34 Early Mapping of the Pacific
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 35

those between America and Europe as the "western" ocean. This

prototype was used by other geographers, among them Glareanus
(1510, Fig. 29), Stobnicza (1512), Apianus (world map of 1520
and volvelle of 1524, Fig. 2), and Honter (1546, copying Apianus).
Glareanus was perhaps the first geographer to make maps
focused on the Pacific. His hemisphere labels two islands in the
mid-Pacific, the larger, upper one being Japan (Zipangri) and the
lower being Candin. There is no reliable identification of this latter
island; it is found on several earlier mappaemundi, such as the
Genoese world map of 1457, and was adopted by Martellus and
Waldseemiiller, among others. Behaim noted on his 1492 globe
that this island is a place which lies "foot against foot" (that is, on
the part of the earth opposite Europe), and thus where "when it is
day with us they have night, and when the sun sets with us they
have their day." This consideration influenced Glareanus's decision
to locate Candin in the mid-Pacific.

Two Patterns of Early Pacific Mapping

At this point, however, the evolution of the Pacific diverges into
two separate paths. Along with the "correct" one of Waldseemiiller,
who theorized that America was an autonomous continent which
decisively split the waters between Asia and Europe into two, came
a "false" Pacific, though no less rationally conceived. This alternate
Pacific was created when America was identified with a mammoth
Southeast Asian subcontinent found on several maps of the late
fifteenth century. Some theoreticians concluded that the newly
discovered American continent was, in fact, that Asian subconti-
nent which, the reasoning went, earlier geographers had placed too
far to the west. The "true" and "false" Pacifies coexisted for the first
half of the sixteenth century.
In the detail shown from the 1532 world map attributed to
Holbein and Minister (Fig. 31), the mermaid swims in the "true"
Pacific. The "false" Pacific was created when geographers identified
the subcontinent to her immediate left as being America, and the
sea forming its western shores as the Pacific. The theorists who
proposed this erroneous interpretation, creating an alternate Pacific
by expanding the Indian Ocean, were as devoted as Waldseemiiller,
and assessed tidbits of evidence as compelling as his.
To see how this happened, we need to backtrack to the Ptole-
maic concept of the earth, such as exemplified by the woodblock
rendering from the 1482 Ulm issue of the Geographia(Fig. 30).
Although the Alexandrian cosmographer Claudius Ptolemy lived
in the second century AD, his Geographia was widely studied in the
fifteenth century, having been translated into Latin by 1406.
Note that an arm of land extends from Southeast Asia and
wraps around the lower right of the map, connecting to Africa and
rendering the Indian Ocean a closed sea. But serious geographers
perusing Ptolemy's map in the later fifteenth century knew that the
Indian Ocean was doubtfully landlocked, and that beyond Malaya
lay many islands. Even if they did not know that Javan and Arab
merchants routinely plied between the Indian Ocean and South
China Sea, several European travelers had demonstrated this as

Left-. Fig. 29. Hemisphere, Henricus Glareanus, ca. 1510. T h e "true" Pacific,
formed from the partition of an autonomous America, with Japan at the center.
[Cim. 74, Universitatsbibliothek Miinchen]
36 Early Mapping of the Pacific

of Ptolemy's land bridge, and the sea immediately west of it, a

region of the Indian Ocean Ptolemy called the "Great Gulf," was
the Pacific Ocean. (Similarly, once the belief in an austral continent
came into vogue, it could be seen as the southern, east-west seg-
ment of the land bridge, which Ptolemy, in his imperfect under-
standing, had placed too far north.)
When you pried the Southeast Asian land bridge away from
Africa, the rightmost finger of your right hand would have wrapped
around an entrepot called Cattigara on the southeasternmost shore
of the Indian Ocean. Ptolemy's Geographia contains an account
of a voyage to this port city by a navigator named Alexander. The
"Great Gulf" on whose shores it lay was probably the Gulf of Siam
or South China Sea, and Cattigara was probably in what is now
Vietnam. But once the "false" Pacific was created from Ptolemy's
"Great Gulf," Cattigara, it seemed, must lie in Peru, and Alexander
Fig. 30. World, Ptolemy's Geographia, Ulm, 1482 (1486). [Martayan Lan, NY] must have crossed the Pacific and back, two millennia ago. This
concept remained even when the geography did not: at the end of
the sixteenth century, Ortelius makes clear in the text accompany-
ing the Maris Pacifici (Fig. 58) that he believed Ptolemy's "Great
Bay" to have been the Pacific Ocean.
This cartographic metamorphosis can be seen in progress
on the 1522 sketch map by Alessandro Zorzi and Bartolomeo
Columbus (Fig. 27). The land on the left is both Asia (interior)
and North America (coast). The long coast running along the
center bottom is South America, with the Caribbean islands above.
But most important for the cartographic fate of the Pacific is the
neck of land in the lower left connecting it to Asia. This is a combi-
nation of Southeast Asia, Central America, and part of western
South America. In the bottom left corner is cattigara, placed below
the equator (the lower horizontal line) to conform to Ptolemy's
assigned coordinate of 8° 30' S latitude.
Next, when geographers realized that South America lay far
from Southeast Asia, the breadth of the "Indian" Ocean was simply
increased and Cattigara, now lying south of any continental land
known in Asia, was stranded in South America. Hence, it became
Fig. 3 1 . Detail of world map attributed to Hans Holbein and Sebastian Minister,
1532. Ptolemy's Sinus magnus (left) properly remains as the Indian Ocean.
"obvious" to anyone perusing the result that Ptolemy's "Great
Gulf" was really the Pacific Ocean. Everything fit nicely into place.
America and Asia need not even be severed from each other.
well: Marco Polo had returned to Europe by sailing to Persia from This, in fact, is how Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first European
China, Friar Odoric sailed to China through the Indian Ocean, to see the Pacific from American shores, probably envisioned the
and Nicolo de' Conti had sailed to the Spice Islands. ocean. When in 1513 Balboa crossed the Central American isth-
Thus, several fifteenth-century mappaemundi pried open the mus at Darien, he referred to the open ocean to the south as the
land bridge as part of a radical overhaul to the Ptolemaic pattern. "South Sea," probably believing that he had crossed an enormous
In about 1490, Henricus Martellus's answer was to open the ocean Amerasian peninsula similar to that depicted by Fine (Fig. 33).
by yanking the land bridge away from Africa, leaving it as a vast He doubtfully envisioned his ocean as a "discovery" per se. Rather,
subcontinent. Soon afterwards, the discovery of America appeared he probably thought he had finally found the eastern shores of an
to many geographers to confirm the existence of this subcontinent. extended Indian Ocean.
To envision this, go back to the Ptolemaic map in Fig. 30. An alternate theory about Cattigara achieved the same basic
Imagine holding Ptolemy's Africa in your left hand. Then, with result. Let us return to the east-west breadth of the Ptolemaic land
your right hand, take the land bridge at the lower right of the map bridge we set aside a few paragraphs above. Just as the "vertical"
and pull it eastward, breaking it free of the horizontal southern section of the land bridge was thought to be Ptolemy's misunder-
segment. Now pepper the eastern segment with Spice Islands in the standing of America, so was the "horizontal" section a misunder-
China Sea, and what you have left is the basic Martellus pattern. standing of Terra Australis. The sixteenth-century Spanish explorer
When Columbus and those who followed him reached a conti- Pedro Sarmiento believed Alexander's sailing time to have been
nent in the "same" place as Martellus's Southeast Asian subconti- forty days and determined the location of Cattigara to be on
nent, the inference was obvious. America was the eastern segment the Pacific shores of a great southern land. That Cattigara was
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 37

Fig. 32. In this world map of ca. 1527, Franciscus Monachus created the Pacific by expanding the Gulf of Siam and eastern Indian Ocean. From left to right, a "modern"
(non-Ptolemaic) India is followed by Malaya, spanning across the hemispheres. A wide gulf separates Malaya from the last "Asian" peninsula, which is Mexico, and a
hoped-for strait separates Mexico from the rest of the continent. Far to the north, Mongolia (Mongallia) spans the China-Amerasian interior, and Bergia, a place
mentioned by Marco Polo, designates the Gulf Coast of North America. Reproduced from Henry Harisse, Discovery of North America, 1892.

celebrated as a rich entrepot would soon support the belief that himself sailing around its Martellus-type Southeast Asian subconti-
this southern Pacific continent would bring great wealth to who- nent, which was then understood as an Amerasian subcontinent.
ever first discovered it. Sarmiento, it is no coincidence, accom- That Pigafetta's geographic concept of the Pacific did not
panied Mendana on his voyage in search of the Solomons. change even after the voyage is revealed in his manuscript: "During
The "false" Pacific pattern reached its height with the world these three months and twenty days," he wrote of their Pacific
maps of Oronce Fine (Fig. 33). Despite the relative sophistication crossing, "we were in an open gulf," his use ofgulfbeing the key
of Fine's depiction of the New World, Cathay (Catay) occupies the word. How wide was his "gulf"? "We were in an open gulf, where
region of Texas, Mangi (southern China) is in Mexico (even Johann we must have covered four thousand leagues through this Pacific
Schoner believed that Marco Polo's Quinsaywas Mexico City), and Ocean." A Spanish league equaled about 5.9 kilometers. They were
of course telltale Cattigara lies on the coast of Peru. If one com- not naive to the staggering breadth of ocean they had traversed.
pares the land bridge in Ptolemy's world map (Fig. 30) to the This "Indian Ocean" lineage was adapted to more current
Pacific coastlines of Fine's America and Terra Australis—despite information by the eminent Italian cosmographer Giacomo
the vast difference between them, they are in fact the "same." Fine Gastaldi on his world map of 1546 (Fig. 36) and on his Carta
created America and Terra Australis by enlarging Ptolemy's land- Marina of 1548 (Fig. 62). On the latter, the peninsula on the left
locked Indian Ocean and remaking its eastern and southern shores. border of the map contains southern China, Burma, and Malacca.
The resulting Indian/Pacific Ocean is still nearly landlocked, open Directly below it lie Sumatra and Java. Gilolo (Halmahera) and
only through the narrow Magellan Strait and a wider passageway Huban (a Philippine island from Magellan) lie to the east, in the
by southern Africa and Madagascar. gulf formed by Malaya and America. Balboa's Mar del Sur ("South
Sea") denotes only the water immediately below Central America.
O n the Eve of Magellan Just as Magellan set out on his circumnavigation in 1519,
When in 1520 Ferdinand Magellan successfully navigated the strait Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel, and his son Jorge Reinel, produced
named after him (but dubbed the "Strait of Patagonia" en route) a collection of charts now known as the Miller Atlas (Fig. 35). Be-
and crossed the ocean, how did he envisage the world? Antonio lieved to have been commissioned by Portugal's King Manuel for
Pigafetta, who accompanied Magellan and chronicled the voyage, Francois I of France, the work was embellished with the assistance
explains that Magellan "had to sail through a very hidden strait, as of the artist Gregorio Lopes. The geographers' evident wish for a
he had seen in the archives of the king of Portugal, on a map drawn global coverage presented the opportunity to draw from the latest
by a worthy man named Martin of Bohemia." Magellan, in other explorations in Africa and the New World, the charts of which
words, had seen a map by (or after) Martin Behaim and envisaged clearly are a foothold in the empiricism of the Renaissance.
38 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 33. Oronce Fine set his geographic ideas to paper with a double-cordiform map in 1531, and this single cordiform in 1534 (Cimerlino, 1566). Fine was the first to
publish maps extensively tapping data from Magellan's voyage. America is a subcontinent of Asia, and the Pacific is vastly undersized, having been rendered a large gulf.

We see that influence of new discoveries wane in the work's 1515 with a series of sketches by Francisco Rodrigues. Little is
map of Southeast Asia, which mixes Arab and medieval data with known about Rodrigues, save for what is mentioned in letters by
a flawed representation of the then-recent Portuguese conquest of Albuquerque, the Portuguese conqueror of Malacca. His maps
Malacca. But this genre, unlike that of portolan charts, forgave were apparently copied from Indonesian or Arab originals. Accord-
speculation so long as it was cloaked in beautiful images, and so ing to a letter sent by .Albuquerque to his king in April 1512, he
they continued east to the "Pacific" (Fig. 35). Here, the mapmakers had a map "which had the names in Javanese writing," but which
were forced to step back to a more medieval approach, mapping he could translate because "I had with me a Javanese who could
from inference and camouflaging the uncertainty with vignettes, read and write." Albuquerque sent with his letter a copy of the
yet at the same time marking latitudes as though geographic map "which Francisco Rodrigues has traced."
placement had some meaning. Said in the title to be a map of the In another letter to the king, Albuquerque wrote that Rod-
"great gulf in the China sea"—that is, the Pacific Ocean formed rigues had accompanied an expedition he had dispatched to the
from the eastern section of Ptolemy's Indian Ocean—the Pacific Moluccas under de Antonio de Abreu. Rodrigues was "a young
"gulf" extends to 45° north, about the latitude of northern man who has always been in India as a pilot, and he knew very
Hokkaido, further north than later mapped by Fine or Gastaldi. well how to make a map if necessary, and this is why [I] sent him
The kingdoms and islands placed in this "Pacific" and its shores there." Aided by Malay pilots, they reached as far as Banda. It was
were extracted from Ptolomaic, medieval, and Arab sources. with such sharing of geographic knowledge and piloting skills that
Extant European mapping of individual islands begins in about the Portuguese began penetrating the western Pacific.
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 39

Fig. 34. World map recording the tracks of Magellan, Battista Agnese, ca. 1544. [Library of Congress]

The Pacific's East-West Breadth confidential and had no influence on their printed contemporaries.
Along with de Abreu and Rodrigues, the Portuguese expedition Yet something went queerly wrong when the voyage was first
to the Moluccas carried one Francisco Serrao. Misfortune and tapped for printed maps. Its initial impact was the opposite of
adventure worthy of a novelist's pen brought Serrao to Ternate what one would expect. In the late 1520s, the brilliant cartographer
(Moluccas), where he set himself up as a facilitator of Portuguese Oronce Fine labored with Pigafettas text to produce his radical
trade between the Spiceries and Malacca. What is important to our new world map, which when published in 1531 was the first to
story is that he wrote letters to an old friend who had taken part extensively exploit the voyage's data (1534-66 version, Fig. 33).
in the conquest of Malacca but had since returned to Portugal— Ironically, however, his meticulous efforts to incorporate Magellan's
Ferdinand Magellan. Serrao, boasting of the virtues of the Moluc- data resulted in his further undersizing the Pacific.
cas, suggested to his friend that they lay so far east as to be more How could this have come to pass? How could any mapmaker
easily accessible by a voyage west, around the New World, a scen- read of the expedition's odyssey across the Pacific and abbreviate
ario made even more viable by the underestimation of the size of it even further? Fine, ironically, was led astray by an error in the
the Pacific. Magellan failed to convince the Portuguese crown of source he consulted for information on the voyage. Working in
the feasibility or political wisdom of attempting such a voyage, but Paris, he almost certainly tapped the original French edition of
ultimately won support from Spain, and in 1519 set out on the Pigafettas journal, published in that city in 1525. In that work,
maiden circumnavigation of the earth (Fig. 34). Fine found what appeared be to be the ideal data for sizing the
The reports given by the survivors of the Magellan expedition Pacific—the actual longitudes calculated during the voyage.
should, one would have thought, immediately laid to rest any Longitudes noted in the course of the expedition's Pacific cross-
significant underestimation of the size of the Pacific. "More vast ing were calculated west from the Line of Demarcation set by papal
than mind of man can conceive," was the way Maximilian of
Transylvania described the ocean, based on his interviews with the
expedition's survivors. For the cartographers of the Spanish court, Overleaf. Fig. 35. Chart of the Pacific Ocean from work now known as the Miller
data from the voyage did indeed result in an immediate expansion Atlas, ca. 1519. The voluptuous work was produced by the chartmakers Lopo
Homem, Pedro Reinel, and his son Jorge Reinel, assisted by the artist Gregorio
of the ocean, exemplified by the charts of the first cosmographer Lopes. It is believed to have been commissioned by Portugal's King Manuel for
of the Casa de Contratacion, Diego Ribero. Such charts were Francois I of France. [Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris]
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 45

bulls and treaties, which ran roughly running along the longitude had settled, though he was probably following indistinct rumors
of western Brazil. A fateful error, however, had crept into the of the discovery of Tahiti. Even coordinates were flaunted—102°
printed edition. Rather than citing the longitude as degrees west west of Paris, 27 or 28° south, an area of empty ocean.
from the Line of Demarcation, as Pigafetta had done, the text refers Although an ancient concept, the "empirical" incarnation of
to the figures as longitude west from the line of departure. That Terra Australis occurred when Magellan sailed through the strait
meant that Fine was studiously plotting his Pacific reference points now bearing his name. Many geographers assumed, whether or not
west from Seville rather than western Brazil, thus cheating the Magellan himself did, that the land lying to the south—in reality
Pacific of a breadth roughly equal to the entire Atlantic Ocean. Tierra del Fuego—was part of the great continent. Sixteenth-
The issue was never clarified because newer data soon rendered century renderings of the continent are numerous, and include
figures from the Magellan voyage irrelevant. Writing in 1553, the Monachus (Fig. 32), Fine (Fig. 33), and de Jode (Fig. 56).
English chronicler Richard Eden still speaks of their position "in
longitude from the place from whence they had departed." Terra Australis and Other Enticements
The most dauntless champion of the belief that an extensive tem-
The Pacific's North-South Limits perate continent formed the southern shores of the Pacific came
Most of the Asian and American coasts forming the east-west in the eighteenth century in the person of Alexander Dalrymple.
outlines of the Pacific soon became tolerably fixed on maps. Dis- Brilliant, capable, and passionate in his pursuits, Dalrymple
covering the ocean's latitudinal breadth, however, involved voyages originally had been the candidate to lead the circumnavigation
to inhospitably frigid seas, and these remained little known on the ultimately given to James Cook. His life had a tragic cast to it:
north, and altogether mysterious on the south, until the early first, an obsession to make Balambangan (Borneo) into a British
nineteenth century. free port, though a clever concept, ended in disaster, and then his
The search for Terra Australis, continental land in the southern maniacal research into proving the existence of the southern conti-
Pacific, dominated Pacific exploration and theory from the mid- nent culminated just when it was being categorically disproved. In
sixteenth through the latter eighteenth century. Even voyages that
focused on the islands of the tropics, seemingly removed from any
Previous pages: Fig. 36. World map by Giacomo Gastaldi, 1546, the progenitor
preoccupation with continental southern shores, were still guided
of a sequence of maps continuing through the end of the century. Opposite:
by the common cause of a vast, populated coast defining the ocean's Fig. 37. Cornells de Jode, 1593. The first printed map specifically devoted to
southern perimeter, the discoverer of which would bring wealth North American shores of the Pacific. Quivera, the mythical kingdom sought by
Coronado, appears in the south, in what is now California. To the north lies the
and fame to him and his country. Terra Australis would not easily
kingdom ofAnian, which when transplanted there by Giacomo Gastaldi from
surrender to explorers' failure to find it; instead, it underwent Marco Polo's Asia, became the origin of the hypothetical Strait of Anian. Cape
amorphous incarnations whenever an unknown coast was sighted Mendocino is accurately placed at just above 40° east. The Arctic region is
depicted according to Mercator, who in turn derived it from a medieval text, and
but not circumnavigated. the magnetic pole is shown, its declination from the perspective of the Cape Verde
First postulated by the ancient Greeks, Renaissance Europe Islands. From the Speculum of Cornells de Jode, 1593. Below: Fig. 38. An easy
found corroboration of continental southern Pacific shores in northern route into the Pacific was sought above the New World and, as shown
hypothetically on this map, above Eurasia. Helisaeus Roslin, 1611.
Judeo-Christian texts. It seemed to some at the time to be the
region to which Solomon's ships had sailed to secure precious
materials for the fabled temple, and indeed the idea that the Lost
Tribe of Israel would be found in the Pacific was a recurrent idea.
All this blended together into a formidable coast that would not
easily erode from failure to locate it.
The elusive entrepot of Cattigara became entwined in this
nearly mystical search for Terra Australis. Finding Cattigara had
been one of Magellan's goals, but his failure to find it where Ptol-
emy had prescribed was hardly its epitaph. After its appearance on
the coast of Peru by Zorzi, Fine, and Munster, the influential Pedro
Sarmiento, who accompanied Mendana on the discovery of the
Solomons, concluded that Cattigara lay on the Pacific shores of
Terra Australis, and was inhabited by Jews. Sarmiento had good
reason to doubt the Peruvian location given it by some of his con-
temporaries—he was in Peru. For him, "Cattigara" was "the land
which the describers of maps call the unknown land of the south."
A rabbi named Aaron Levi wrote a treatise entitled Muckwa
Israel which stated that the "white" or "olive skinned" people who
are said to inhabit the "southern lands" are descendants of the ten
tribes of Israel. Jean Surville's voyage to the Pacific in 1769 was
motivated in part, according to rumors circulating in India at the
time, by the search for a South Sea island in which a colony of Jews
46 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 39. Melchisedech Thevenot's interpretation of the discoveries of Maarten Vries and Joao da Gama, from his map of the western Pacific, 1664 (ca. 1690).

1773, Cook, leading an expedition Dalrymple might have had as de Jode (fig. 37) was the first to take advantage of the strait to make
his own, crossed the Antarctic Circle without encountering land, a map devoted to the Pacific coast of North America, complete
distancing the collective consciousness from the austral continent. with the strait's namesake kingdom. In the Pacific north of the
He died before Antarctica was discovered. hypothetical strait, de Jode maps the magnetic pole, as detected
Whereas the Pacific's southern bounds were sought for the land from the position of the Cape Verde Islands. The discovery of the
supposed to lie there, the ocean's northern bounds were looked "real" Strait of Anian had to await Vitus Bering, who sailed the
to for a sea route above America that would facilitate easy access strait now named for him in the early eighteenth century.
between Europe and the Orient. In the earliest period, two princi- Father Xavier, an early Jesuit in China, claimed that silver mines
pal theories coexisted: that North America was an island and open would be found in Japan. The intrigue deepened when rumors
ocean north of it connected the Atlantic and Pacific; and converse- began to flourish of rich islands to the north of Japan, and in 1584
ly, that the Indochinese and California coasts were contiguous, a Spanish captain, Francisco Gali, sailed from Macao to Acapulco
running along temperate latitudes. Among the latter theory's and heard stories from his Chinese pilot about rich lands to the
greatest proponents was Giacomo Gastaldi, who shows the coasts north. Gali claimed to have followed the leads and discovered four
thus in world maps of 1546 (Fig. 36) and 1548 (Fig. 62). islands to the northeast of Japan abounding in precious metals and
Late in his life, however, Gastaldi became deeply affected by a other desirable commodities. Two years later, Pedro de Unamuno
re-reading of Marco Polo's text. While in China, Polo had been told was sent by the viceroy to Peru to investigate the islands, which
that a large gulf "extends for a two-month's sail toward the north, of course were not to be found. Yet on Ortelius's Maris Pacifici of
washing the shores of Manzi on the south-east and of Aniu and 1589 (Fig. 58) one already finds such an "island of silver"
Toloman besides many other provinces on the other side." In light (Isla de Plata) above Japan.
of the evolving knowledge of the Pacific perimeter, Gastaldi began The dream, indeed, was hard to shatter, and the Dutch East
to suspect that "the other side" was America, and thus that a strait India Company sent Abel Tasman to investigate the "silver islands"
separated it from Asia. In 1556, a map of America by Gastaldi was in 1639, before his famous voyage to the Southwest Pacific. Not
published in Ramusio's Navigationi et Viaggi that shows only a convinced by his failure to locate the islands, four years later the
tentative land connection over the north Pacific, and five years later Company sent Maarten Vries to search for them. Vries' quest gave
he made a map of the world depicting a strait between the two rise to more confusion when he perceived one of the Kuriles to be
continents, placing Polo's Tolman in the American Northwest. He continental. This coast, which he named Compagnies landt for his
named the strait "Anian" after Polo's "Aniu." Aided by the influence employer, he believed to be the westernmost region of America, a
of Gerard Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, the strait was almost concept that was widely adopted in the seventeenth and eighteenth
universally adopted by the end of the sixteenth century. Cornells centuries (for example, the Mar del Sud of Coronelli, Fig. 90). The
 Mariners, Mapmakers, and the Great Ocean 47

strait named for him, separating Hokkaido from "Company's

Land," is shown on the map from Gullivers Travels in Fig. 108.
At about the same time as Vries, documents came into the
possession of the Portuguese chartmaker Joao Teixeira relating to
a purported voyage in 1590 by a Portuguese merchant, Joao da
Gama. Da Gama had supposedly sailed from Macao to Acapulco,
where his papers were seized by Spanish officials. The papers in-
cluded a sketch of a long north Pacific coast he skimmed en route.
The map in Fig. 39, an engraved rendering of the Teixeira map,
depicts da Gama's bogus coastline, emended by Thevenot to
accommodate Vries' erroneous interpretation of his observations.
Several mapmakers understood da Gama's land, conversely, to be
a relatively small island (for example, Zatta, Fig. 21).
Actual exploration of the northern boundaries of the Pacific
was not easily rewarded. In an undertaking which was humbling
even by the arduous standards of early Pacific exploration, Peter the
Great sent a Dane, Vitus Bering, to establish a port on Kamchatka
to build a vessel with which to explore the easternmost limits of
the Russian empire. In 1728, now sent by Peter's widow, Empress
Catherine, Bering pierced through the strait separating Asia and
America. The thick fog concealed Alaska on both his outbound Fig. 40. W h e n the Russian explorer Krusenstern was consulted by Count
Romanzov about an expedition to search for a Northwest Passage, he recom-
and return journey, but a second, longer expedition brought
mended an alumnus of his own Pacific voyage, Otto von Kotzebue. The son of
Bering to the Northwest Coast of America, exploring some of the a dramatist who had authored a play about the ill-fated explorer La Perouse,
Aleutians, sighting Mount Saint Elias, and passing Kodiak Island. Kotzebue penetrated the Bering Strait in July 1816. This chart was included
with the 1825 Viennese account of his voyage.
Two principal schools of thought about the northern Pacific
dominated the middle decades of the eighteenth century: carto-
graphers exemplified by Delisle and Buache, who imperfectly
adopted Bering's discoveries and flavored them with fanciful reports
of purported discoveries by de Fonte and of a so-called "Sea of the
West" in North America (seen in Zatta, Fig. 21); and Gerhard
Friedrich Miiller, who actively contested the Delisle-Buache
mapping and argued for his own mapping of the Pacific north,
which was based on a truer interpretation of Bering's discoveries.
Demystifying the Pacific's northern bounds began in earnest
in 1778, when James Cook sailed north from the Society Islands
for the American Northwest, discovering Hawaii along the way
and reaching the mainland at what is now Oregon. He mapped
the Northwest Coast nearly to the Bering Strait, getting some
additional geographic data through a Russian trader in Unalaska
(Aleutian Islands), who allowed Cook to copy his manuscript
charts. After Cook's death upon returning to Hawaii, his surviving
crew sailed back north, coasting Kamchatka and Siberia into the
Arctic Ocean. The map of the northern reaches published with
the official account of the expedition laid to rest many myths and
ambiguities of the north Pacific frontier.
Many voyages, most balancing scientific pursuit with the pur-
suit of the fur trade, followed in quick succession. France sent
Jean-Francois Galaup de La Perouse, whose atlas contained the Fig. 4 1 . Chart of the Siberian Coast at the southern part of the Bering
Strait, with the islands of Ostrov Arakamchechen and Ostrov Yttygran.
first widely disseminated maps of San Francisco. Monterey, and From the hydrographical atlas of Frederic Liitke, ca. 1832.
San Diego. George Vancouver plied the Northwest Coast at about
the same time as Spain's Alejandro Malaspina. Vancouver's maps,
unlike those of the forgotten Malaspina, were published promptly brilliant protege, Otto von Kotzebue (Fig. 40). Russia's remarkably
enough, and disseminated well enough, to be influential. successful voyages continued through that of Frederic Liitke (Fig.
In the early nineteenth century, Russia embarked on an intense 41), who explored and mapped the Bering Sea in 1827. Mean-
series of northern Pacific exploratory and mapping endeavors. while, the French, English, and Americans were pushing the limits
The voyage of A. J. von Krusenstern was followed by those of his of the ocean's southern bounds, Antarctica having been discovered.
Chapter 3
The Pacific Evolves after Magellan

Spanish cosmographers such as Diego Ribero quickly drew upon the lateen sail which so impressed Magellan and crew. Poop and
Magellan's Pacific crossing, constructing charts based on the reports prow are nearly indistinguishable from one another, as Pigafetta
of the expedition's survivors for the exclusive eyes of their pilots described, this design allowing the boat to switch direction with-
and officialdom. Magellan's log and the charts compiled during the out having to be turned around. Tied to the main body with cross-
course of the voyage were tapped instead by Portuguese authorities, pieces is an outrigger to stabilize it. In other respects, the map's
who had confiscated them from the Victoria and the Trinidad in image deviates from the description. The sail hardly appears to be
the Moluccas. These primary records are no longer extant. "made from palm leaves sewn together," as Pigafetta recorded in his
What do survive are images of various islands drawn by (or text, nor is the boat itself black or white or red, the colors he noted.
after) Pigafetta in about 1525 to illustrate his chronicle of the voy- The Chamorros themselves are covered in monk-like robes, a stark
age. One depicting the Marianas shows one large and two smaller contrast to the naked people he described. The illustration, rather,
islands, following Pigafetta's description of having "discovered a calls attention to Pigafetta's comment that these vessels reminded
small island to the northwest and two others to the southwest, one him of the gondolas which shuttle between Venice and Fusine.
higher and larger than the other two" (Fig. 42). These represent Upon entering open ocean to the west of his new-found strait,
Rota, their first sighting, and Guam. The third island was likely Magellan, impressed by the waters' calmness, dubbed them
a portion of one of the other two. "pacific." "It is indeed pacific," Pigafetta wrote, for "there were
The map's illustration of a native vessel prominently depicts neither storms nor tempests." In 1540, eighteen years after the

Left. Fig. 42. Guam and Rota, Antonio Pigafetta, ca. 1525. W h e n George Anson visited the Marianas more than two centuries later, his crew was impressed with the
Chamorro vessels, which they called "flying proas" on account of their speed. [Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University] Belour. Fig. 4 3 . Asia and
America, Sebastian Minister, 1540. In the lower right we see the first appearance of the term "Pacific Ocean" on a printed map. A widening of the ocean is readily evident
over earlier printed maps. This improvement, however, has not deterred him from persevering in the belief that the ancient seafarer Alexander had reached Peru, where
we find Cattigara marked. An inscription associates South America with the lost continent of Atlantis. [Mappae Japoniae]

INDIA E X T R E M A X I X N O V A TABVLA* N O V A E INSVLAE, XVIMSIOVA T A B V L A

50 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 44. Chart of the Pacific, Battista Agnese, ca. 1544. [Library of Congress]

return of the Victoria, the name "Pacific" was christened on two saw no other things than birds, and trees, and for this reason we
printed maps from Sebastian Miinster's rendering of Ptolemy's called them the Unfortunate Isles, and the distance between them
Geographic that of America (right half, Fig. 43), and of the world. is two hundred leagues. We found no anchorage there, and there
This first use of the term was widely proliferated, being published were many fish called tiberons [sharks] there. The first island lies
four times through 1552, the same maps reaching a wider audience in 15° and the second in 9° of south latitude. Daily we sailed fifty,
in another work of Minister, the Cosmographia, in editions from sixty, or seventy leagues. And if God had not given us fine weather,
1544 through 1578. His maps of America and Asia, when mated we would all have perished of hunger in this very vast sea. And we
together, form a continuous map of the Pacific and were the first were certain that such a voyage would never be made again."
widely disseminated, detailed cartographic images of the ocean. One of the islands became known as St. Petri, the other as
They formed two of a set of four continent maps in the book, the Tuberones. These first two European discoveries in Oceania,
first set of continent maps to be published. though relatively minor, endured on maps for over 200 years,
All but one of the islands inhabiting Miinster's Pacific come appearing on charts which discarded far more important data from
from Marco Polo and Magellan. Just below the galleon represent- subsequent Spanish voyages. They occasionally grew into major
ing Magellan's Victoria lie two islands that Magellan passed on his islands at the desks of some mapmakers, such as on Jodocus
odyssey across the Pacific in 1520—the first of them perhaps Puka Hondius's map of America, 1606 (see Fig. 67).
Puka, on the northeast of theTuamotus. Miinster's inexactness with Minister was not alone in supposing them to be neighboring
these two islands, as well as with the Marianas still to come, sug- isles. He may have been influenced by Gerard Mercator, who on
gests that he relied on secondary sources, as even the flawed printed his double-cordiform world map of 1538 had also placed them
account made plain that these two islands do not lie on the same together, though further south, below the Tropic of Capricorn.
latitude, as he has mapped them. The most likely source of the Similar confusion afflicted Guam and Rota, which one would have
error is the Decades of Peter Martyr, which simplifies the account thought a more straightforward matter. Mercator (1538) places
and reads as though the two islands formed a neighboring pair. Guam and Rota (Latronu) south of the Tropic of Capricorn, while
Since Pigafetta's description of them represents the first pub- two years later Miinster maps them twice: on the north, they are on
lished description of any island of Oceania, the brief passage is the America half as two islands just to the left of the galleon's mast,
worth quoting: "We saw but two uninhabited islands, where we labeled ins. pdonum; while on the Asia map, they are placed to
 The Pacific Evolves after Magellan 51

the south, as Insulae pdonu. Both terms were typical corruptions

of ladroni ("thieves"), the appellation given the archipelago by
Magellan because of the islanders' purported habit of stealing.
And although Miinster's cartography was often flippant, Gerard
Mercator, even in his gravest errors, was painstakingly careful.

Medieval Lore Mixes with New Discoveries

Directly above Miinster's depiction of Magellan's Victoria, we jump
back about 230 years to two features derived from Marco Polo's
account of his return from China to Europe in the 1290s. The
large island named Zipangri is, of course, Japan. Less certain is the
identity of the "archipelago of 7,448 islands" surrounding it, but
these probably represent the Philippines and neighboring Indo- Above: Fig. 45. Japan, Bordone, 1528. Polo placed Japan "some 1,500 miles from
nesian islands. "According to the testimony of experienced pilots the mainland," his "miles" probably referring to Chinese li, thus close to the true
distance separating Japan from China. Overleaf. Fig. 47. Chart of the southwest
and seamen that sail upon [the China Sea] and are well acquainted Pacific from the Vallard atlas of ca. 1547. At the south (top) center is lajave, the
with the truth," Marco Polo related based on what he learned in northern part of enigmatic "Jave-la-Grande." Above the lower left rose compass
China, the China Sea "contains 7,448 islands, most of them in- are the Philippines, one marked as the island where Magellan was killed (Mactan).
The easternmost major islands are Halmahera and Maluku. [Reproduced by
habited." Miinster also maps Palawan (Puloan) based on Magellan's permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.]
voyage. Though placed in its approximately correct position, it
lacks the island's long shape and diagonal orientation.
Calensuan, the single prominent island in the south Pacific In 1526, a Portuguese pilot, Jorge de Menzes, was blown past
(straddling the border of the America sheet), is Miinster's only the Southeast Asian island of Halmahera and reached the north-
Pacific land not from Polo or Magellan. Indeed, it is not a Pacific west coast of an unknown landmass—the earliest known Euro-
island at all, but one of uncertain identity found in the Indian pean landfall in New Guinea. Two years later, Alvaro de Saavedra
Ocean on maps dating from the latter part of the fifteenth century. came upon it while searching for a sea route east across the Pacific,
Transplanting it to the Pacific was natural for Miinster; his place- and named the island Papuas. It received its modern name in 1542
ment of Cattigara in Peru shows that he believed the Pacific to when Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, also searching for an eastward route
have been Ptolemy's "Great Gulf" of the Indian Ocean, and thus across the Pacific, dubbed it New Guinea because of the land's
in his mind he was keeping Calensuan in the same place as his pre- dark-skinned people. In the words of the English chronicler
decessors. That the name Calensuan is coincidentally similar to Richard Hakluyt, Villalobos "sent from the Island of Tidore [a]
those of a couple of islands reported by the Magellan expedition in ship towards New Spain, by the south side of the line [equator] ...
the southern Philippines, may have "confirmed" the placement. they sailed to the coast of Os Papuas, and ranged all along the
In Miinster's Southeast Asia, we find the islands of Taprobana same, and because they knew not that Saavedra had been there
Sumatra (the first term being a confusion with Ceylon), lava minor before, they challenged the honor and fame of that discovery. And
(a duplication of Sumatra or Borneo), lava maior (Java), Pome because the people there were black and had frizzled hair,
(Borneo), Timor, Taranata (Ternate in the Moluccas), Gilolo they named it Nueva Guinea."
(Halmahera), and, as we saw earlier, Puloan (Palawan).
A more cautious rendering of the Pacific is seen in some port-
Fig. 46. Detail of New Guinea from the Orbis Descriptio of Ruscelli, 1561.
olan charts of the era, such as that by Battista Agnese, a Genoese
chartmaker who worked in Venice (Fig. 44). No hypothetical
Japan is shown, and the only islands in the mid-Pacific are the two
passed by Magellan. Most conspicuous are the map's lavish vignette
of a spice tree marking the Moluccas in the western Pacific, and
the color red on the Gulf of California. Why red? When in 1539
Hernan Cortes sent Francisco de Ulloa to investigate Baja
California ("Santa Cruz"), Ulloa, in his account of the expedition,
commented that they named the gulf Mar Bermejo ("reddish sea")
"because it is of that color." Sediment from the Colorado River
produced the reddishness.
The first printed maps of individual Pacific islands (and thus
the first to be seen by a wide audience) appeared in the isolario, or
"island book," of Benedetto Bordone, 1528 (Fig. 45). In addition
to maps of Sumatra and Java, Bordone included a conjectural map
of Japan based on Marco Polo. Not until fourteen or fifteen years
after the map was published was the first Portuguese blown off
course to a chance landing on Japanese soil.
54 Early Mapping of the Pacific

The first published map to record the discovery was the 1561
world map, Orbis Descriptio, of the Venetian mapmaker Girolamo
Ruscelli, who depicts it as a series of small islands hovering above
a vague east-west coast (Fig. 46). This pattern quickly vanished
from view, even on late (1598-9) issues of the same map, where
the copper was reworked to make New Guinea a single large island.
But New Guinea was supposed by other geographers to be part of
Terra Australis. The influential Ortelius was himself split on the
matter, depicting it as an island on his world maps of 1570 (Fig.
63) and 1587, but as part of Terra Australis on his maps of America
of the same years (1587, Fig. 57), in all four cases accompanied by
an inscription explaining that its nature was not known.
New Pacific geographic data mixed with myth and medieval
sources. The same year that Ruscelli first revealed New Guinea
to purchasers of his atlas, the Basel publisher Petri issued a small
woodcut map of Java (Fig. 48), the first separate map of the island
after Bordone's archaic rendering of 1528. Whereas Ruscelli's
New Guinea was a straightforward record of whatever data he
could acquire, Petri's Java was nothing more than "modern" nom-
enclature imposed upon a fanciful configuration embellished with
medieval toppings. The south of Java, which extends fully to 14°
because the southern realm of the island was still unknown to
Europeans, is inhabited by anthropophagi, eaters of human flesh.
North of Java lies Nueupora, a throwback to Marco Polo's mention

Above: Fig. 48. Woodcut map of Java. Henricum Petri, in Johann Honter's Proli
de Sphaera, 1561. Below. Fig. 49. The western Pacific, Abraham Ortelius, 1570.
 The Pacific Evolves after Magellan 55

Fig. 50. The Pacific islands of Inebila (left), inhabited by men, and Imangla (right), inhabited by women, from the Cosmographie Universelle of Andre Thevet, 1575.
Inebila comes from the Arabic nabilah, meaning "beautiful." Imangla is believed to derive from the Sanskrit word mangala, meaning "fortunate."

of the Nicobars, which indeed were often placed north of Java Both these erroneous conclusions were reached in an attempt to
in the latter part of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. correlate Ptolemaic data to the modern map.
Map publishing in the sixteenth century was a business as Ortelius scatters Micronesia around images of two mermaids,
it is now, and consumer appeal was as important then as now. each looking at herself in a mirror. Such images are normally gra-
Abraham Ortelius discerned a market for a lavish, high-quality tuitous decorations of no contextual or intellectual value. However,
atlas composed of uniformly produced maps of the whole world, in this instance the two narcissistic sprites probably reflect one of
and masterfully tapped it. In 1570, while the adventurous but several traditions of an "island of women" somewhere in the seas
crude woodcuts concocted by Miinster were still being published, off Asia, perhaps a Chinese version in which the women conceive
Ortelius produced his famous atlas, Theatrum. Among its maps by looking at their own reflected image, as Ortelius depicts.
finely engraved on copper was one focusing on Southeast Asia and The French geographer Andre Thevet drew a separate map of
the western Pacific (Fig. 49). Geographically, the map was derived the male and female Pacific islands for his Cosmographie Universelle
from the great world map of Gerard Mercator from the previous of 1575 (Fig. 50). The island on the upper left is inhabited solely
year, amended by Ortelius to remove certain controversial opinions by men, that in the lower right, only by women. Although not
of the elder geographer. Regarding Pacific shores, these were the named on the map itself, Thevet's text identifies these as imangla
theory that the Philippine island of Palawan was Ptolemy's island (female) and inebila (male), which various medieval sources record
of Bazacata, and that the Canton River was actually the Ganges. somewhere in Asian or Pacific waters. They appear at the western,
56 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 5 1 . Chart of the North Pacific, Joao Teixeira, 1630. T h e Solomons are shown hugging the New Guinea coast, and a few scattered islands from the Spanish explor-
ations of the mid-sixteenth century appear south of the Marianas, where Saipan is mistakenly shown as the southernmost member. Several Pacific islands lie to the
southwest of California, sighted by the Villalobos expedition in 1542. Teixeira correctly depicts Hokkaido (Yezo) as an island in remarkable accuracy, though this would
 The Pacific Evolves after Magellan 57

not last, as the island would soon be assimilated into the unknown expanses of a vast coast. Hovering below Hokkaido is a vast tract of land spanning the north Pacific,
broken only by the theoretical strait dubbed "Anian" by Gastaldi. Another Teixeira-type chart, dating from about two years later (Fig. 93), revises the land forming the
northern perimeter of the Pacific, adds another northern passage, and scatters various Spanish sightings about the waters of Oceania. [Library of Congress]
58 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 52. Wall map of America, Willem Blaeu, ca. 1608 (Pietro Todeschi, ca. 1673). The Pacific, otherwise empty, serves as a canvas for embellishment. [Sidney R. Knafel]

"Pacific" threshold of the ocean sea on such mappaemundi as the pelago reached the attention of mainstream mapmakers after they
Sanudo-Vesconte map of ca. 1320. appeared on the large 1569 world map of Mercator, and more
Both Marco Polo and Nicolo de' Conti mentioned the islands. influentially the following year on the maps of the world and
Every March, according to Polo, the inhabitants of the male island America in Ortelius's Theatrum (world, Fig. 63).
sail to the island of women, where they remain for three months. Meanwhile, the most conspicuous development off Asia's
Diverse traditions generally envisioned such isles as lying in the Pacific shores during this time was Japan. Cimpangu, the island
western Pacific. Pigafetta wrote that an "old pilot of the Moluccas" reported by Marco Polo which helped lure Europeans into eastern
told him about an "island where there are only women, who seas, now joined the ranks of Western empirical mapping. Whereas
conceive by the wind, and if there is a male, they kill him." Malay in 1540 Miinster (Fig. 43) had to rely exclusively on hypothetical
tradition identifies the island of Engano, south of Sumatra, as an medieval representations, fourteen years later Ramusio (Fig. 174)
island inhabited solely by the fair sex. The Trobriand Islanders also is able to vastly improve his Cympagus size and location, its south-
had their own "island of women" in their repertoire of distant ern shore being placed at 25° north, only about six degrees south
shores, said to be a very dangerous land. In 1561, Gastaldi labeled of the actual southern coast of Kyushu. This reflects intercourse
one of the Philippine islands (probably Samar or Letye) as y delle between Portuguese and Japanese merchants in southern Chinese
done, the "island of women." The myth of such an island in the and Southeast Asian ports. Two years later, in 1556, Ramusio
Pacific continued well into the eighteenth century. would introduce to printed maps the modern name for Japan on
In the eastern Pacific, two important archipelagos found their his map of the Western Hemisphere, as Giapam.
way from official portolan charts to the published arena during The first map of Japan based on actual observation was a 1586
the last third of the century: the Galapagos and Juan Fernandez. woodcut by Renward Cysat, who consulted both published and
Discovered in 1535 by Fray Tomas de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, unpublished Jesuit accounts. This was followed nine years later by
the Galapagos's earliest Spanish visitors saw less value in them than the copperplate map of Abraham Ortelius, based on information
did pirates, who exploited their position as a base from which to from the Portuguese Jesuit Luis Teixeira and derived both from
attack Spanish vessels plying between Peru and Mexico. The archi- Jesuit sources and from Gyogi maps (see derivative in Fig. 54).
 The Pacific Evolves after Magellan 59

Above: Fig. 53. Woodcut map of Japan, Renward Cysat, 1586. Whereas the Bordone map (Fig. 45) is the first separate European map of Japan, Cysat's is the first to be
based on actual geographic data. [Mappae Japoniae] Below: Fig. 54. Japan, Metellus, 1596. Based on the Teixeira prototype of Japan, as published by Ortelius in 1595.
Chapter 4
In the Wake of the Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands form a queer saga in Pacific cartography. the length of time Solomon's ships took to reach Ophir—three
Discovered in the course of a 1567-8 voyage from Peru by Alvaro years—as proof that it lay so far to the east as to clearly be within
de Mendana y Neyra, they were entwined with the search for a the Spanish realm no matter how one determined longitude.
southern continent and forcibly endowed with qualities befitting Amerindian reports gleaned by the Spanish in Peru fit the
their name, a name that was selected for them before their discov- puzzle of Ophir perfectly, "confirming" that a land of riches lay
ery. They were then "lost," and for two centuries were sought by in the Pacific. Pedro Sarmiento, later to become a member of the
numerous navigators, plotted in widely disparate meridians, and Mendana expedition, met one Tupac Inca Yupanqui, who claimed
argued over by theorists. Yet, when they were finally rediscovered to have encountered along the Peruvian coast merchants who had
in the eighteenth century, the explorers who did so did not recog- sailed into the Pacific on balsa craft. According to Sarmiento,
nize them as being Mendana's lost isles until French geographers Tupac Inca met "some merchants who had come by sea from the
solved the puzzle and further expeditions confirmed the identity. west, navigating in balsas with sails. They gave information of the
In the sixteenth century, places mentioned in the Judeo- land whence they came, which consisted of some islands called
Christian Bible were frequently still viewed as actual earthly locales. Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, where there were many people and
Most influential of these were passages about Ophir, the fabled much gold." Gold, to Sarmiento, suggested Ophir.
land of riches and the place from which King Solomon was be- Tupac Inca, however, "did not lightly believe the navigating
lieved to have acquired his treasure. Early writers generally thought merchants," so he consulted a man who was "a great necromancer
Ophir to lay in Africa or Southeast Asia, but by the sixteenth cen- and could even fly through the air." The medium not only con-
tury, the Pacific became the preferred stage in the minds of some firmed the truth of the merchants' story by divination, but also
Spanish pilots and cosmographers. In the 1520s, Rodrigo de Santa used his magic arts to go to the place himself. He "traversed the
Ella, founder of the University of Seville, wrote that Ophir lay in route, saw the islands, their people and riches, and, returning, gave
the middle of the Pacific. Seafarers followed the lead: it was sought certain information of all to Tupac Inca." Tupac Inca's invoking of
by Sebastian Cabot in his aborted attempt to reach the Moluccas the supernatural to confirm the truth of the Pacific land found a
in 1526, as well as by Villalobos when he crossed from Mexico willing subject in Sarmiento, who himself was so intrigued by the
to the Philippines in 1542. mystical that he was held in suspicion by the Inquisition.
Tupac Inca then "caused an immense number of balsas to be
The Solomons on Printed Maps constructed, in which he embarked more than 20,000 chosen
Ophir figured not only into European attraction to the Pacific, men." He navigated and sailed on until he discovered the islands
but also its geographic theory. The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 of Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, and returned. The length of
had established a Line of Demarcation to divide the undiscovered, Tupac Inca's Pacific voyage was said to be nine months to a year.
non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal. This theoretical Thus, the locales assigned by Amerindian and Biblical reports
Line ran 370 leagues (approximately 1770 kilometers) west of the of riches converged in south-central Pacific. Such was the romance
Cape Verde Islands, and continued around the earth through the
Pacific. Another 250 years would pass before longitude could be Opposite: Fig. 55. New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Cornelis de Jode, 1593.
determined with accuracy, however, and in the interim the Line T h e island at right center, /. de los Tiburones, is one of the pair of "unfortunate
islands" Magellan passed en route across the Pacific, named by mapmakers for
was pushed eastward by the Portuguese and shoved westward by the "many fish called tiburons there" (see page 50). Overleaf. Fig. 56. M a p of
the Spanish. Each used any available argument where science was the world on a double polar projection, Cornelis de Jode, 1593. In the southern
wanting—and for the Spanish, the Bible's account of Ophir served (right) hemisphere, New Guinea (11:30) is deemed a part of Terra Australis. T h e
two Pacific islands at about 1:00 are Magellan's "Unfortunate," placed according
as evidence. When representatives of Spain and Portugal met in to Pigafetta's text. Note the narrow strait between North America and Asia, with
Badajoz in 1524 to discuss these Pacific conflicts, the Spanish used Japan squeezed between them (left hemisphere, 12:00). [William Ginsberg]
64 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 57. America, Abraham Ortelius, 1587. A major consideration that led Ortelius to revise his maps of America and the world in 1587 was the discovery of islands to
which the name Solomon had been given. With Ortelius's revision, the discovery of the islands—and with it the two-century search to find them again—first appeared on
printed maps.That islands befitting the term were sought before their discovery is also reflected by Ortelius: off the Peruvian coast are "undiscovered gold islands," a ves-
tige of the very reports that had led Mendafia to undertake his voyage. Juan Fernandez also makes its printed debut on this map, as Felix and Nabor. [Martayan Lan, NY]

and expectations that in a letter of 1565 to the king of Spain, two the Pacific Ocean as a whole (Fig. 58). The 1587 maps retain as
years before Mendana even left port, the governor of Peru already well the "undiscovered gold islands" off the Peruvian coast of the
referred to the land his proposed voyage would find as "some earlier Mercator and Ortelius maps, but these are wiped away in
islands, called Solomon, which lie over opposite Chile, toward the the Maris Pacifici. In 1593, the Solomons featured prominently
Spice Islands." This heightened anticipation and even influenced on a map of New Guinea by Ortelius's less successful business rival,
printed maps. Gerard Mercator, on his 1569 world map, places Cornelis de Jode (Fig. 55), as they did on a map from Barent
an archipelago roughly 10° west of Peru which he states is said Langenes' miniature atlas five years later (Fig. 59).
to be gold-bearing but as yet undiscovered. Ortelius then included These early Pacific maps derived their data principally from two
them the following year on his maps of America and the world Spanish endeavors: the search for westerly winds for a viable route
(Fig. 63), the legend abbreviated. eastward across the Pacific back to the Americas, and the search for
There is no indication that the expedition itself ever endowed a gold-rich austral continent. Most of the smaller islands in the
its discovery with the name of the ancient king of Israel, but that open Pacific are uncertain members of the Micronesian archi-
appellation was instinctively attached by those who related news of pelagos, and are discussed in Chapter 9.
the voyage. When the Solomon Islands were plotted on manuscript Before the Maris Pacifici, Ortelius had hedged his bets regard-
maps—a notable early appearance being the Lopez de Velasco chart ing New Guineas insularity. On his two principal geographic
of 1575—they were already designated as such. models, those of 1570 and 1587, he had depicted New Guinea as
Abraham Ortelius introduced the "real" Solomons to printed an island on the world (1570, Fig. 63) and as part of Terra Australis
maps on his 1587 revisions of his maps of America (Fig. 57) and on the America (1587, Fig. 57), in both cases qualifying the deline-
the world, and two years later gave a different rendering of them ation with an inscription stating that the nature of New Guinea
on his Maris Pacifici, the first printed map specifically devoted to was not known. But the Maris Pacifici delineates New Guinea as
 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands 65

Fig. 58. Pacific Ocean, Abraham Ortelius, 1589. Dated (and presumably engraved in) 1589, this first printed map specifically devoted to the Pacific Ocean was first
published in 1590. Only two years separated this from Ortelius s revision of his map of America (Fig. 57), which included most of the Pacific because the west coast of
New Guinea and the Strait of Anian were placed on the same longitude. Yet Ortelius now delineates New Guinea in a new fashion, omits Juan Fernandez, reworks the
Spanish discoveries in Micronesia, and draws heavily from Spanish incursions north along the California coast to give new form to the American Northwest. Unlike
Ortelius s map of America, however, the Maris Pacificisms not widely copied, a 1598 map by Metellus being the only unaltered published imitation.

an island in a new configuration, and without the disclaimer, des- departure, no land having been found, chief pilot Hernan Gallego
pite focusing on the region more closely than his previous maps. steered them slightly to the north, not leveling their course until
As before, Ortelius identifies New Guinea as the Piccinacoli of they had reached 6° 15'. In mid-January, an island was sighted
Andrea Corsali, a merchant explorer in the employ of the Medici to which they gave the name Ysla de Jesus. Both Ortelius (in the
who had traveled with a Portuguese vessel to the Indian Ocean. "In Maris Pacific!) and de Jode (Fig. 55) map this island in the north-
the east," Corsali wrote in a letter published by G. B. Ramusio in east corner of the archipelago. Various identifications have been
the first volume of his Navigationi et Viaggi (1550), "are the islands proposed for this island. A likely answer is that it is one of the
where cloves grow, called the Molucca Islands, and where nutmegs Tuvalu group, roughly midway between Fiji and Kiribati. Accord-
and macis are found: in another lignum aloe, in still another sandal ing to Gallego, they were 1471 leagues from Peru, a marked under-
wood. And navigating to the east they say that there is the land of estimate. Although winds and currents prevented any landing,
Piccinnacoli. This land, in the opinion of many, joins on the east some contact was made with the Melanesian or Polynesian island-
and south the land of Brasil or verzino." Corsali's reference to "east ers. The original Melanesian inhabitants were at this time being
and south" reveals that he understood "Brasil" not as a region of superceded by people from Samoa.
South America, but rather as a region of Terra Australis, to which Continuing west, a series of shoals and low islands were found
the term had been transferred by such geographers as Schoner which, it being the Eve of the Candlemas, were named Los Bajos de
(Fig. 26) and Fine (Fig. 33) as a result of a confusingly worded la Candelaria. These, recorded by de Jode, are perhaps Roncador
report entitled Newe Zeytung auss Presillg Landt in a 1514 German Reef or Ontong Java, which lie just north of the Solomons. Diffi-
newsletter, detailing an otherwise unknown voyage. cult weather now ensnared their progress, some days being wasted
Sailing from Callao on November 19, 1567, with two vessels, under bare poles, but on February 7, 1568, a large landmass was
Mendana sailed west and slightly south until reaching about 15i/2°, sighted which is still known by the name they christened it—Santa
at which latitude the course was set due west. A month after their Ysabel, prominent on our three maps (Figs. 55, 58, and 59). The
66 Early Mapping of the Pacific

New shores were then sighted which the islanders, and in turn
the Spanish, called Malaita, mapped as a large island by Ortelius
and as a smaller one by de Jode. Ortelius also marks P. Escondido
("hidden point"), because there a good harbor's spaciousness was
at first concealed by its narrow mouth. Two other islands during
their reconnaissance were given the names San Nicolds and Ysla de
Arracifes, though the presence of reefs and shoals deterred them
from any attempt at landing. Both Ortelius and de Jode corrupt
Arracifes to Amacifre, suggesting that there was at least one piece
of source material common to them.
Landing on another island, Gallego encountered natives who
seemed very friendly, but who then suddenly attacked them. Since
"they attacked us after a broken truce," the company named the
place La Treguada ("Truce Island"). Ortelius labels this island Isola
Fig. 59. New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Barent Langenes, 1598. Atreguada, while de Jode, extracting the name from a secondary
source without knowing the event, supposes it to have been
intended as "aguada," meaning a place were water is obtained.
expedition landed on the island, took possession of it in their king's Next, a trio of shoal-girt islands was encountered and given the
name, and set about building a brigantine for local exploration. name Las Tres Marias, recorded simply as Las Marias by Ortelius.
The small vessel set out on April 7 with pilot Gallego among its A narrow, mountainous island with many people was dubbed
crew. Sailing eastward along the coast, a new island came into view Ysla de Santiago-, de Jode marks it S Thiago, while Ortelius uses
which, as Gallego related, "appeared to be very fertile," and so was S. Anna. Both depict it as the most easterly of the archipelago.
given the name Buena Vista. Ortelius and Langenes record it thus, The brigantine now returned to Santa Ysabel and the full crew
while de Jode marks it as I. Verdes (green islands). This was Nggela set off on the main vessel. Uncooperative winds stifled their efforts
Sule or another of the Florida Islands. to retrace some of the brigantine's discoveries, and instead they

Fig. 60. World map recording the voyages of Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish, Jodocus Hondius, ca. 1595.
 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands 67

Fig. 6 1 . T h e southwest Pacific, Jodocus Hondius, 1606.

found themselves coasting an island not sighted earlier, San Francis Drake's Circumnavigation
Cristoval (de Jode's S Xpovat). This may have been the southern When Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world in 1577-80,
coast of Santiago. Approaching two low, flat islands with reefs, they he made no discoveries or landfalls until a single stop in western
were met by twelve islanders in a canoe from whom they tried to Micronesia, and thus had no direct impact on the mapping of
determine the direction of any major landmass. The islands were Oceania. His greatest influence was in placing his kingdoms
named Santa Catalina and Santa Ana, both shown by Ortelius. footprint on the western shores of North America, in expediting
Beset by hardships, the expedition headed home, reaching Dutch mastery of the ocean by seeding the belief that Tierra del
California in December 1568 and Callao in September the follow- Fuego was insular (see page 86 below), and in stealing confidential
ing year. Although the distance Mendana sailed from America was Spanish charts, some of whose data was probably tapped by such
severely underestimated, maps of the period generally placed the mapmakers as Jodocus Hondius (Figs. 60 and 61 above), Edward
Solomons correctly in relation to New Guinea. This relative accu- Wright, and Gabriel Tatton (Fig. 64).
racy resulted from the prevailing underestimate of the size of the While sailing up the western coast of South America, four
ocean itself, and with it the distance of New Guinea from Peru. months before heading into the open waters of the Pacific, Drake
However, as maps increased the breadth of the ocean, the pirated a small Spanish vessel which was en route to Panama. To his
Solomons became further removed from New Guinea. Failure fortune, one of the pilots on board was Alonso Sanchez Colchero,
to find the Solomons again led to expedient placement of the who was on his way to meet the new governor of the Philippines
archipelago, and by the end of the seventeenth century some and to escort him across the Pacific to his new post. Drake con-
geographers displaced them yet further to the east. While, in 1679, fiscated Colchero's charts and sailing directions, and then through
du Val (Fig. 89) still locates them close to New Guinea, they bribes and threats tried to coerce him into escorting the Golden
appear south of California on the 1713 map of de Fer (Fig. 97) Hindacross the Pacific. Colchero was, however, strong-willed, and
and, copying him, on the 1719 map of Chatelain and on the refused to yield. Thus, when Drake opened his sails from New
map of de Leth of ca. 1740 (Fig. 65). Albion (North America) on the first English Pacific crossing, it
68 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 62. Giacomo Gastaldi, 1548 (Girolamo Ruscelli, 1561). In this image, the map's the right and left ends have been joined to show the full ocean between Africa and
America, which is depicted as an expanded Indian Ocean. Revealingly, Oceano Meridionale ("Southern Ocean"), which traditionally denoted the Indian Ocean, is marked
in the seas off South America, and Mar del Sur, Balboa's term for the ocean he saw after crossing Central America, specifically marks only those waters. Halmahera (Gilolo)
is the single prominent Pacific island, its longitude midway between Malaya and California, and due north of California is the Chinese province of Mangi (Manzi).

was with the benefit of Spanish charts and sailing directions, but It is even possible that Drake's "Island of Thieves" was a fabri-
without the benefit of a Spanish navigator. cation, a deliberate imitation of Magellan's Ladrones, intended to
Drake's first landfall in the Pacific was what he dubbed the establish English precedent and sovereignty over Magellan's or
"Island of Thieves"—the same appellation given by Magellan to some future landfall. Neither of the two world maps created shortly
his first Pacific stop. This characterization, however, has no value after Drake's return, one by Nicolas van Sype (1583) and the other
in determining the identity of this island, as thievery, or at least by Jodocus Hondius (ca. 1595, Fig. 60), show the island, and his
what to European sensibilities was thievery, was a widespread trait descriptions of the "Island of Thieves" contain ethnographic in-
among Pacific Islanders, who did not have the same precepts about consistencies. These problems aside, the island may have been
private property as their visitors; it is difficult to find an account of Palau or Yap. From Micronesia, Drake enriched himself in the
a European voyage to Oceania which does not complain about this. markets of the Moluccas, and was nearly shipwrecked off eastern
 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands 69

Fig. 63. World map, Abraham Ortelius, 1570. This was the first widely disseminated map to record the Galapagos Islands. [Martayan Lan, NY]

Halmahera before reaching open seas to the south. En route home, he The Marianas are much improved over the Ortelius Maris
became the first European known to reach the southern shore of Java. Pacifici, now boasting twelve named members correctly aligned
Drake's landfall on Nova Albion on the west coast of North north-south. One of interest is Buena Vista ("good view"), directly
America quickly became a standard feature on published maps, north of Guam in the position of Tinian, probably taken from
but his influence on the mapping of the ocean was subtle. Some Drake. George Anson, who himself partook of a bounty of Spanish
delayed improvement in the mapping of Halmahera might be charts in the early 1740s, said that "the pleasing appearance of
attributed to his report that the island's eastern coast was wildly Tinian hath occasioned the Spaniards to give it the additional
irregular. His influence on the mapping of Java was perplexingly name of Buenavista," an identity confirmed by the le Gobien
scant. Although his landfall on its southern coast should have map of 1700 (Fig. 176).
immediately corrected the medieval error of extending the island The sixteenth century saw one more English circumnavigation,
much too far south, in reality it had no geographic impact even that of Thomas Cavendish. After traversing the Magellan Strait in
on the few maps that acknowledge his presence there. Many details 1587, Cavendish crossed the Pacific to Guam and the Philippines,
of his voyage remain today a topic of emotional controversy. adding nothing of consequence to Europe's mapping of the ocean.
That the Spanish charts stolen by Drake had some subtle
influence on mapmakers in England can be discerned on the map The Marquesas: Mendafia's Second Expedition
of the Pacific by Gabriel Tatton, a hydrographer of the Thames As Drake and Cavendish were flying the English flag over the
school of chartmakers (Fig. 64). Published in about 1600 as a Pacific, Mendana fought to secure an expedition to further his
loose-sheet map, never part of a formal atlas, Tatton's recording discoveries in the Solomons. He knew that he would need to fix
of Nova Albion, Drake's enigmatic encounter with the west coast longitude more accurately, and thus hoped to be back on the
of North America, is the only clear mark of Drake himself. How- islands during any of several predicted lunar eclipses. Had prep-
ever, new data found in the northern Pacific likely comes from arations gone smoothly, he might have made eclipses expected in
Drake's Spanish charts. We can see this even along the New Albion September 1575, September 1578, or July 1581.
coast, where Tatton's map places an inscription in Spanish—Tatton But not until April 9, 1595 did he set off from Peru with four
would have composed his own in Latin. vessels carrying colonists, soldiers, wives, and five rather odd sea
 70 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 64. Pacific Ocean, Gabriel Tatton, ca. 1600. Above the Marianas lie a few wayward islands, the old islands of silver (Plata), and some misplaced Micronesian islands.
The Solomons, while following an established pattern (similar, for example, to Langenes, Fig. 59), have begun to move away from New Guinea. [Library of Congress]

charts—odd for their deliberate omissions. Chief pilot Pedro the people different, and the terrain unfamiliar, soon made him
Fernandez de Quiros had been instructed to prepare one chart concede. They were in Fatu Hiva, the Marquesas, and named the
each for himself and the other four pilots, which were to contain new island Magdalena. This was the first European contact with
only the Peruvian coastline and two points in the Pacific, one at any of the principal Polynesian islands, and the beginning of an
7° south, the other at 12° south, both 1500 leagues from Lima, enduring mystique about the singular beauty of the Marquesans.
the furthest distance it was believed the Solomons could lie. Lest Three other islands nearby were named San Pedro (Motane),
anyone be tempted away from their arduous task, "no other land "having much wood and fine plains, level, and not very high,"
was charted, in case some ship should steer to or desert to it." Dominica (Hiva Oa), which "appeared very populous, delightfully
After a bit of plunder along the coast to provision themselves pleasant, with fine plains, rising grounds, on which were seen spots
and "exchange" an inferior vessel, they turned west to find the of thick woods," and Santa Cristina (Tahuata), which was "high in
landfalls of nearly three decades earlier. On July 21, land was the middle, with hills and valleys where the Indians dwell." Chief
sighted which fit their charts' wide parameters of the Solomons' pilot Quiros was particularly enamored of the Marquesas, and
latitude, lying at about IO1/20 south. Soon "above 400 Indians cognizant of their strategic potential as a foothold between America
came out in 70 vessels, others swimming, others upon floats: they and the Philippines. Here Quiros's desire to proselytize, which
had beautiful teeth, eyes, and mouths, delicate fine hands and feet, would eventually have him fight for another voyage to the Pacific
flowing hair, many of them very ruddy, and among them some as had Mendana before him, became evident: "I never in all my
of the most beautiful boys." Mendana thought he had found the life felt such anguish," he wrote about an encounter with a Mar-
Solomons, but this was a profound self-delusion, even in those quesan boy of about ten, "when I thought that so beautiful a
days of rough longitude, for they were only halfway there, having creature should be left to go to perdition."
sailed about 6500 kilometers. That the language was different, Mendana took possession of the four islands for Spain and
 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands 71

Fig. 65. Pacific Ocean, de Leth, ca. 1740. The southern coast of Australia merges into the eastern coast of New Zealand. Quiros's "lost" Solomons are the prominent
islands just east of the mid-Pacific. [Martayan Lan, NY] Overleaf. Fig. 66. Chart of the South Pacific, Joao Teixeira, 1630. [Library of Congress]

attempted to leave settlers. But the idea was abandoned in the face Another island, populated, was discovered to the south. Again
of his soldiers' opposition, surely a lucky event for the Marquesans. Mendana thought he had reached the Solomons, the islanders
These idyllic islands would later prove to be of great value as a here looking more like those he remembered. But of the Solomon
stopping point en route to Hawaii and the Northwest Coast; but language they understood nothing, and he was again forced to
several generations would pass before Marquesans again saw such concede that this was a new discovery, not their goal. Had he sailed
large vessels and fair-skinned visitors. another 400 kilometers to the west and northwest, he would have
Leaving behind 200 Marquesans massacred from soldiers' encountered the beginning of his lost archipelago.
bullets—that being his estimate—Mendana continued generally The name he gave their new island, Santa Cruz, now denotes
westward. The fleet was so plagued by dissatisfaction, disease, and the entire group. They were in Ndeni (Nendo). As the island was
violence among the crew, that the decision to have omitted all non- pleasant and fruitful, its people generally peaceful and generous,
vital shores from their onboard charts had already proven savvy. Mendana again tried to leave colonists, but the soldiers, who were
Pilots complained that they had been sailing over rocks and over expecting an Ophir befitting its name, were out of his control.
land "because the place where they had been painted had been Not only did they kill for sport as they did on the Marquesas,
erased from the charts." They were sailing in seas where, they but they now killed deliberately to start a war to sabotage any
realized from vestiges of shorelines still discernable, their charts possibility of being left as colonists.
originally had the Solomons or Terra Australis laid down. The state of the expedition grew increasingly desperate. When
A group of four islands was discovered which they named Islas Mendana himself died of disease, his indulgent wife, Ysabel de
de San Bernado, probably Puka Puka in the Cook Islands (not the Barreto, took command as per her husband's unfortunate direct-
same as Magellan's Puka Puka), and then a lone isle they called ive, and it was left to Quiros to guide the remains of the fleet to
Solitaria, perhaps Niulakita in the Tuvalu group. A most unusual Manila, a monumental feat for which history has not accorded him
island then came into view, wooded and beautiful, with a cone- his due. His ship deteriorating, the crew incapacitated and dying,
shaped hill on the west belching massive flames. They were wit- Ysabel de Barreto tried to undermine his authority, claiming most
nessing an eruption of Tinakula in the Santa Cruz group (see supplies as her own and even, so posterity has it, washing her
d'Estrecasteaux, Fig. 170). A few days later, the entire crown of clothes in a private supply of water as the rest of the crew were
the volcano blew with a force that shook the ship. dying of thirst. One marvelous discovery, nonetheless, was made
74 Early Mapping of the Pacific

during this desperate flight—the Carolinian island of Pohnpei. Luis Vaez de Torres as second in command. In failing health,
Whereas Mendanas first expedition produced immediate and Quiros established an unreasonably puritanical code of behavior
profound changes to the mapping of the Pacific, the second did for his crew, but succeeded in avoiding the ghastly bloodshed of
not. The Marquesas, which had no known European visitors again islanders that had characterized the previous voyage. The fleet of
until the second voyage of Cook in 1774, received remarkably little two vessels and a launch planned to sail in a zig-zag in search of
attention from the Dutch mapmakers who dominated the printed the austral continent: WSW until reaching 30° latitude, then if no
map trade for most of the seventeenth century. They are recorded land were found to sail N ¥ to 10°, then SW to 20°, and finally
by Hessel Gerritsz on his manuscript chart of 1622 (Fig. 76), N W to 10° 15' where if no land had already been discovered, they
though most of the standard printed Dutch charts omitted them. would reach Santa Cruz (Ndeni) by sailing due west. But reaching
But the Marquesas made a prophetic reappearance on maps in 26° on the initial WSW course, the crew, afraid of finding them-
the eighteenth century, before their rediscovery by Cook. De Fer, selves trapped in the vast gulf theorized on many maps (such as
on his encyclopedic Carte de la Mer du Sudoi 1713 (Fig. 97) marks Ortelius's America of 1587, Fig. 57), grew so discontent that
a small archipelago as Isles du Marquis de Mandoge in their approxi- Quiros, against Torres's counsel, changed course. Several small
mately correct location, though ironically they appear just off the islands in the Tuamotus were then discovered, none having any
western shores of Guadalcanal, since the Solomons had been dra- significant effect on maps beyond the Crown's own portolan charts.
matically offset to the east, while J. B. Nolin included them on his In early April, when Quiros's crew were on the verge of mutiny,
map of 1740 without the confusion of the Solomons, just to the the largest of a chain of islands was discovered. Quiros learned that
left of the upper vignette of ships (Fig. 68). Antonio Zatta (Fig. the native people called their land Taumako, by which name this
115) depicted the Marquesas boldly in 1776, probably inspired member of the Duff Islands is still known. They were about 150
by Cook's return at the end of July, the previous year. kilometers northeast of their target of Santa Cruz (Ndeni).
Quiros was impressed by the islanders, relating that they "are
Quiros and Torres great seafarers, and the vessels in which they sail are large and can
Mendanas chief pilot, Quiros, inherited the passion with which go a great way." With their planked decks and outriggers, they were
his former commander had fought for the voyage of 1595-6. Con- capable of carrying thirty to forty people. The people appeared to
sumed by a desire to discover the great austral continent and to have heard about the Spanish from their visit to Santa Cruz twenty
convert its people to Christendom, Quiros made his way to Rome years earlier. They explained that the volcano (Tinakula) lay five
in 1600 seeking patronage. There he presented to the Duke of Sesa, days' sail to the west, and that it, in turn, lay close to the island of
Spanish Ambassador to the Holy See, plans for a circumnavigation Indeni (Ndeni), which Quiros recognized as the indigenous name
via Terra Australis for the purpose of testing new navigational for Santa Cruz. Travel among these islands was routine, and the
instruments of his making, taking magnetic readings, and spread- king of the island, Tumai, dispatched a canoe to Santa Cruz to pass
ing the Faith. He and Mendana must have come close to the great on news of the fair-skinned strangers' presence.
austral continent on the previous voyage, he reasoned; now he Quiros tapped Tumai's geographic knowledge. The king listed
would find it, and find the Solomons again as well. seventy islands for Quiros, indicating their distance by sailing time:
Like Mendana, Quiros endured considerable bureaucratic "He pointed to the sun, then rested his head on his hand, shut his
obstacles, but finally set out from Callao in December 1605 with eyes, and with his fingers counted the number of nights one had
to sleep on the voyage." Tumai drew circles on the ground to map
their relative size, except for the larger ones, for which he opened
Below. Fig. 67. The southwest Pacific from Jodocus Hondius's map of America,
his arms. But it was the island called Manicolo (perhaps Malekula
1606. Opposite: Fig. 68. The eastern Pacific, from a wall map of America by
Nolin, ca. 1740. Lands reported by Mendana, Quiros, and Davis are marked. in Vanuatu) that most intrigued Quiros, because when King Tumai
described its size, he opened his arms without having them meet,
"showing that it continued." Could Manicolo, Quiros wondered,
be the great southern continent?
Geographic information was also gathered from a hostage taken
at Taumako, whom they named "Pedro." Pedro described an island
called Tucoopia (the small island of Tikopia, about 300 kilometers
to their southeast), and that a five days' sail from it lay Manicolo,
the island of which the king had spoken. Two days with a good
breeze brought one to a group of low islands called Fonfono
(Lomlom, Reef or Swallow group), and near to these lay Pilen
and Nupan. Among the other islands cited by Pedro was one called
Pouro. A navigator whom he knew had returned from the island
with a red-breasted parrot and white-tipped arrows.
Freshly armed with these geographic tidbits, Quiros abandoned
his original objective of Santa Cruz. The possibility that Manicolo
was the legendary austral continent was too seductive. With Pedro
guiding them to the southeast, they passed Tikopia, and then
76 Early Mapping of the Pacific

-pour I'll oriss c m d e 1'An rip ode. d e p a r t s receptive to Quiros's proselytizing. A decision was made to sail to
T&ienconvc
the mountains sighted to the south, but the winds proved unco-
operative. For reasons which remain disputed, Quiros, instead of
returning to Espiritu Santo, suddenly headed back to Peru via
Mexico, leaving the expedition under Torres. "The Captana
departed without signal, and although next morning we went
in search of them we could not find them," Torres wrote. After
waiting fifteen days, Torres sailed along the east coast of Espiritu
Santo and saw that it was an island, then turned to the northwest
and reached the southeastern coast of New Guinea.
Torres's finest moment came after he tried to round the island's
eastern coast but was prevented by doing so by contrary winds.
Navigators before and long after Torres had feared sailing south
of New Guinea because they did not know whether it was an island
or part of a greater austral landmass, and if it were the latter, the
prevailing easterly winds might prevent a vessel from ever return-
ing. If no passage were to be found below New Guinea, there was
no known wind with which they could sail back out. This "one-
way gulf" that mariners feared, had been shown or alluded to by
various mapmakers (for example, Ortelius, Fig. 57). The same fear
of being trapped by one-way winds and currents would similarly
delay discovery of the east coast of Australia.
But Torres, weighing this risk against that of waiting for the
discovered various islands in Vanuatu (New Hebrides). The pro- season of northwest winds, decided to gamble that a passage existed
fusion of islands reinforced Quiros's illusion that he was on the on the south of New Guinea, and sailed west through the strait
brink of a continental landfall, and when a major coast appeared, which now bears his name, a treacherous passage strewn with reefs,
he named it Espiritu Santo, believing that he had reached it. In this islands, and currents. He skimmed southern New Guinea and
he was deceived not just by his own dreams, but also by the coasts perhaps sighted northern Australia, then found his way to the
of neighboring islands, which from his approach would have ap- Philippines via the Moluccas, reaching Manila on May 6, 1607.
peared as one. To their anchorage on the southeastern corner, they Diego de Prado, navigator on the second vessel, drew charts
gave the name Vera Cruz, to their settlement, New Jerusalem. of their path and kept a journal of the voyage. Thirty-four days,
With the threat of mutiny ever present, there followed three de Prado wrote, were spent sailing the strait, and Torres reported
weeks of disappointing relations with the islanders, who were not seeing large islands to the south—possibly having sighted Australia.

Above: Fig. 69. In about 1697, Pierre

Moullard-Sanson constructed double-
hemisphere world maps on curious
perspectives. One, intended to show
the earth as it would be seen from
the interior looking out, depicted
the earth's surface features in mirror
image. Another, illustrated above,
used Paris rather than the poles or the
equator as its pivot. This meant that
the adjoining hemisphere, illustrated
here, had to be pivoted on the point
exactly antipodal to Paris, which lies
in the southern Pacific (actually fur-
ther east than he calculated, relative to
Tasmania and New Zealand). Thus,
the map affords us a good glimpse at
how the Solomon Islands and Quiros's
land were juggled around intervening
discoveries, principally those of Tas-
man. Left-. Fig. 70. Magellan's path is
sloppily plotted on this map by Pieter
Vander Aa, 1706. Mira como vaz
("watch where you're going"; see
page 181) gratuitously marks the
strait between New Guinea and
Quiri Regio, Quiros's then mysterious
discoveries in Vanuatu.
 In the Wake of the Solomon Islands 77

Among the other Iberian chartmakers who depicted an insular

New Guinea was Godinho de Eredia, one of the most intriguing
chartmakers of the time. Yet Torres's important discovery eluded
general knowledge until the 1760s, when Alexander Dalrymple
learned of it from Spanish archives in Manila.
The chartmaker Joao Teixeira was typical in envisioning not
just New Guinea as a region of Terra Australis, but Quiros's dis-
coveries as well, marking "land discovered by Quiros in the year
1606" just southeast of New Guinea (Fig. 66). Other mapmakers
reduced Quiros's discoveries to a "Terre de Quir," this "Land of
Quiros" sometimes an amorphous landmass on its own, such as
shown by de Fer (Fig. 97), or integrated into later discoveries,
such as into New Zealand at the hands of Mallet (Fig. 91).
Quiros's obsession with discovering and Christianizing the
austral continent was not dampened by the failure of the voyage.
He returned to Spain to ask to be granted another expedition into
the Pacific, to which the king consented. Daunting obstacles re-
mained, however, and it is doubtful that the voyage would have
ever materialized, even if Quiros had not died in Panama on the
way back. Thus ended the great age of Iberian exploration.

Above: Fig. 7 1 . World map after Macrobius. One of the most widely copied world views in medieval Europe, this map depicts one hemisphere of a spherical earth. The
upper continent comprises Europe, Africa, and Asia, and the lower is an antipodean land, part of the long tradition of austral shores that influenced Pacific explorers such
as Quiros. Two continents on the unseen "far" half of the earth partitioned in two the sea between Europe and Asia as America would do when discovered a millennium
after Macrobius. This particular example is a woodcut from 1521. [Wesley Brown] Below: Fig. 72. World map by Petrus Plancius, 1594. Plancius depicts New Guinea as
part of Terra Australis, though nearly severs them with a river on the west (right hemisphere). The northerly promontory of Terra Australis directly below Southeast Asia
contains place names from Marco Polo, being Lucach, Maletur, and Beach, all of which would be merged into Australia when discovered. [Martayan Lan]
Chapter 5
Earliest Mapping of Australia
and New Zealand

For most of the sixteenth century, the Spanish and Portuguese a lavish "Java-la-Grande," a variation of Terra Australis, replete with
were the only European interlopers in the Pacific, save for a voyage geographic and ethnographic detail. The land contained nomen-
to the western Sumatra port of Ticon by two brothers from France, clature which would appear to be from actual discovery, and usually
Jean and Raoul Parmentier, in 1529. But Holland flew onto the depicted rich fauna and vegetation. Scholarly wrangling over Java-
stage with a storm when Cornells de Houtman reached Indonesia la-Grande began after Cook's discovery of eastern Australia, when
in his voyage of 1595-7, bypassing the Malacca Strait guarded Alexander Dalrymple concluded that one such chart's Coste des
by the Portuguese and entering instead through the Sunda Strait Herbaiges ("coast of vegetation") was Cook's Botany Bay.
between Sumatra and Java. Dutch enterprises competed for the The chartmakers in Dieppe had access to data from Spanish
Indies market following his successful return, leading to the birth and Portuguese navigators, as well as the opportunity to interview
of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1602. pilots and sailors themselves. Taverns in Dieppe must have been
The establishment of Batavia, on the north coast of Java at what awash in sailors' gossip, and Java-la-Grande may represent imper-
is now Jakarta, as the Company's Asian headquarters, soon led to fectly pieced together bits from their charts and oral reports. Ref-
two geographic breakthroughs. First, exploration in New Guinea erence to discoveries by the Parmentier brothers appears on some
resulted in the recorded European discovery of Australia. Secondly, of these charts, but there is too little known about the voyage to
the Company's monopoly on trade through the only known routes make sense of the vague cartographic evidence.
to the Pacific provoked outside business interests to question the How this enigmatic land was envisioned fitting into "known"
prevailing image of Tierra del Fuego as part of an austral continent,
a view best illustrated on de Jode's world map of 1593 (Fig. 56).
Fig. 7 3 . Detail from a map by Biinting, 1581. T h e resemblance of the landmass
Considerable controversy has occasioned the question of
below Sri Lanka (Taprobana) to Australia is coincidental. See also Fig. 26.
European knowledge of Australia before its recorded "discovery,"
and most of the evidence cited to support such claims comes from
early maps of three basic categories. In chronological order of the
claimed discoveries, they are: maps from 1541, 1569, and later
which depict a land of "Beach" on Terra Australis (and eventually
on Australia itself), interpreted as reflecting late medieval know-
ledge of Australia, based on Marco Polo's text; a rendering of Terra
Australis depicting a so-called "Java-la-Grande," or other odd
fragments of land, believed to represent unrecorded discovery in
the early sixteenth century; and a shore discovered in 1601 called
"Lucaantara" (or Luca Antara) which was recorded by a Portuguese
cartographer, Manuel Godinho de Eredia.
The first instance, "Beach," which appeared on numerous
maps into the 1600s, can safely be discredited. A marvelous textual
confusion which befuddled mapmakers, and in turn explorers, its
origin is clear enough that few would now cite it as evidence of
medieval European knowledge of Australia (see page 85 below).
The second category, in contrast, has aroused the greatest
amount of interest. Beginning in the 1540s, some chartmakers
working in the northern French port of Dieppe began depicting
 Earliest Mapping ofAustralia and New Zealand 79

Fig. 74. Linschoten, 1595 (1596). Note Os Papuas, which is Irian Jaya as a separate island from New Guinea, and the land of Beach to the south of Java. Overleaf.
Fig. 75. Southwest Pacific, Joao Teixeira, 1630. The realm of "Nuca Antara," purported pre-Dutch knowledge of Australia, is recorded. [Library of Congress]

terrain can be seen in the chart in Fig. 47. Whether or not Euro- Most likely these are coincidental similarities. The Montanus
peans reached Australia earlier than recorded, the Java-la-Grande "northern Australia" was likely born from the many variations of
of these charts is more likely a whimsy sparked by medieval texts the hypothetical Terra Australis coast, and the Bunting "western
which suggested a vast Java, combined with the discovery of the Australia" either from the vestiges of the huge Southeast Asian
perceived "Terra Australis" coast to the south of the Magellan subcontinent found on Martellus-type maps or, more likely, from
Strait. The appearance of empirical evidence on enigmatic coasts earlier constructions of Tierra del Fuego. Bunting's coast, indeed,
likely came when chartmakers fused together charts of Indonesian is virtually identical to the Tierra del Fuego found on the 1554
shores at inconsistent scale and orientation. Some of the very hemisphere map of Tramezzino, and little different than a mirror
chartmakers that flaunted Java-la-Grande (for example, Pierre image of the arbitrary shape given a hypothetical southern
Desceliers, 1546) accompany it with an inscription stating that continent by Schoner in 1515 (Fig. 26).
it has never been discovered. In 1629, the Viceroy of India received a letter from Portuguese
Shortly after the Dieppe phenomenon, which involved manu- authorities "concerning some discoveries described by Manuel
script charts, a few printed maps depicted coasts that have been Godinho de Eredia." The letter instructed the Viceroy to "endea-
attributed to early knowledge of Australia from unknown sources. vor to learn with certainty, from whatever sources may be most
A 1571 map of the world by Arias Montanus, otherwise unremark- appropriate, what land this is, and of what significance, what ports,
able in its geography, portrays what would appear to be Australia's entries, and anchorages there are, what people live there, what
northern coast, and the 1581 map by Heinrich Bunting (detail, fruits and nuts it produces and anything else that may be ascer-
Fig. 73) boasts a shoreline remarkably like that of western Australia. tained of this discovery."
Montanus, at least, was known to have been interested in new What shores did this refer to? Godinho de Eredia, a Portuguese
discoveries, but for Bunting to have had access to otherwise secret chartmaker convinced of the existence of a Southland, claimed that
new data would be an anomaly, to say the least. in 1601 a Javanese prince had reached a land called "Lucaantara" in
84 Early Mapping of the Pacific

the Southwest Pacific, and that this was part of a great austral Previous pages: Fig. 76. Pacific Ocean, Hessel Gerritsz, 1622. Although dated
1634, this chart is believed to have been made in 1622, the original date having
continent. Whether Godinho de Eredia, whose charts of Southeast
been amended, perhaps by Gerritsz's successor as hydrographer of the VOC,
Asia demonstrate that he was able to tap local data not found on Willem Blaeu. [Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris] Belour. Fig. 78. G. B. Nicolosi,
mainstream maps, was recording knowledge of northern Australia 1660. This early published record of Tasman's discoveries (Diemens landt, lower
right) reflects the room for interpretation left to cartographers in the first decades
five years before its discovery by the Dutch, will probably never
following the discovery of Australia, before its western and northern coasts were
be known. The chart of the Southwest Pacific by Joao Teixeira laid down with reasonable continuity. New Guinea (Papui) is in the upper right
records Lucaantara (Nuca Antard) at about the latitude of Arnhem corner, just west of S. Iago, one of Mendafia's Solomons.

Land (Fig. 75). Although it is placed at a longitude west of even

westernmost Australia, the "true" Dutch discovery of western
Australia is also misplaced to the west.
There is little doubt that now nameless Indonesian and Chinese
mariners reached Australia, whose northern coast lies close to old
Indonesian trade routes. But neither Indonesian nor Chinese
merchants were concerned with exploration for its own sake, and
northern Australia offered no trade products to entice their return.

Mapping the Dutch Discovery of Australia

Whatever Godinho de Eredias land actually was, and whether or
not earlier cartographic allusions to Australia were fancies born on
the cartographer's desk, the earliest definite European sighting of
Australia was that by Willem Jansz in the pinnace Duyfken.
Sailing from Banten in 1606 for the purpose of investigating
New Guinea, Jansz encountered the western shores of the Cape
York Peninsula and followed it to a cape he dubbed "Keerweer"
("turn again"), then returned to Batavia. There is no indication that
he suspected that a strait separated New Guinea from the Cape
York Peninsula, and so the entire region was understood as being
part of New Guinea. The official cartographer of the Dutch East
India Company, Hessel Gerritsz, included the coasts sighted by
the crew of the Duyfken on his 1622 chart (Fig. 76), and named
Australia Duijfienslandt ("Dove Land") after the discovering vessel.
The public did not see Gerritsz's chart, but as early as 1626 traces Western Australia was discovered independently during other-
of the discovery appeared on maps published in books (Fig. 77). wise routine voyages to Batavia via the Cape of Good Hope. The
Thus began the slow, methodical mapping of Australia. Other Dutch initially followed the route of their mentors, the Portuguese,
expeditions quickly followed, notably Jan Carstenz's exploration of paralleling the African coast north and then turning east; but since
the western part of Carpentaria in 1622-3, and Francois Thijssen's this route was subject to the seasonal monsoons, in 1611 a Dutch
following of the Australian coast fully around to the Great Aus- commander named Brouwer tried exploiting westerly winds after
tralian Bight, the vast arch of the southern coast, in 1627. rounding the Cape, sailing east to the approximate longitude of
the Sunda Strait, and then turning north. The result was an aston-
ishingly quick voyage, and subsequent experiments demonstrated
Fig. 77. The first map in a published book to show Australia ('tLand Eendracht')
that the new route cut the time of the Holland-Batavia trek in half
in this title page by Jacques l'Hermite, 1626 (1631). [Gowrie Galleries]
or better. But since their eastward progress through the Indian
Ocean was judged by dead reckoning, some pilots inevitably sailed
further east than intended and stumbled across the western coast of
Australia. The first documented such sighting was by Dirck Hartog
in 1616, who named the western Australian coast Eendrachtsland
after his vessel, a name widely adopted by mapmakers.
The waters off western Australia also presented risks, however,
as an unfortunate English crew discovered when attempting to
copy the new Dutch route. In July 1622, one boat and one sloop,
with a total of forty-six men, reached Batavia, these being the only
survivors of a wreck off rocks which became named for the lost
vessel, the Trial (marked, for example, in Fig. 168). The disaster
occurred at night, but in fine weather and with no land in sight.
If the new route was to be reliable, the region would need to be
mapped to avoid such catastrophes.
 Earliest Mapping ofAustralia and New Zealand 85

To that end, the following year (1623) two yachts, the Arnhem The most prominent identification given Australia on Nicolosi's
and the Pera, left Amboina (Ambon), due west of New Guinea, map is Beach, which designates the bulk of the landmass south and
under the command of Jan Carstenz in the Pera. The little fleet west of Arnhem Land. On July 19, 1619, Frederick de Houtman
followed the southern New Guinea coast to what it called "Drooge was commanding two Batavia-bound vessels when, sailing east
Bocht," meaning "shallow bight." But their "bight" was actually in the Indian Ocean at 32° 20', suddenly they "came upon the
the Torres Strait, the southern end of it the Cape York Peninsula. Southland of Beach." But if this was a new discovery, why did de
A chart carried on board showing the possibility of a passage pierc- Houtman invoke the name "Beach" as though he knew where he
ing the land was supposed to be in error. The coast of "southern was? The reason was that he had, in fact, already seen this land of
New Guinea" (Australia) was followed to 17° 8' south. Beach on maps, right where the shores before him lay. He thought
At this point, however, the Arnhem unexpectedly separated he had found Beach, not discovered it.
from the fleet, Carstenz believing that its crew had deliberately The "Beach" he knew from contemporary maps was a region
deserted for "pleasurable" ports. Whatever the circumstances, we of an austral continent that climbs into the lower southern lati-
know only from its influence on subsequent charts that easterly tudes below Indonesia. Among the many such maps de Houtman
winds blew her across the Gulf of Carpentaria to the land which had probably seen are those of Ortelius (Fig. 63), Plancius (Fig.
still retains the name of the vessel—Arnhem Land. 72), and Linschoten (Fig. 74), all of which place the realm of
Beach directly below Java.
The "Pacific" Land of Beach Reaching Beach had been a goal of previous explorers. Francis
The discoveries of the crew of the yacht Arnhem are among the Drake had hoped to locate Beach, but upon entering the Pacific
reports fused together in the 1660 map by Nicolosi (Fig. 78) as contrary winds made a westward reconnaissance in the high lati-
Arneim landt, immediately south of New Guinea. The geography tudes impossible. One of Drake's vessels sank in the attempt, and
is reminiscent of the Cobourg Peninsula (directly below the word another, whose master soon refused to steer toward Beach for the
Las) and neighboring coast of the Northern Territory, and Melville danger of the winds, was forced to return home.
Island, but in mirror image, as if copied from some regional chart Beach, however, was born not from contemporary exploration,
without inverting it on the copperplate. Nicolosi chose not to but rather from a printing error, several decades earlier, in a render-
presume that the rest of Australia was contiguous with Arnhem ing of the text of Marco Polo's travels to the East. When Polo sailed
Land, instead leaving the matter ambiguous. from China to Persia en route back to Italy in the 1290s, the vessel
he rode stopped at a kingdom he called Lucach, which modern
scholars generally consider to be Thailand, but might have been
Fig. 79. New Guinea and northern Australia, Allain Mallet, 1683. Borneo. Various geographers of the late medieval and early Renais-
sance period found differing solutions to the riddle of Lucach's
location, based on their interpretations of the manuscript versions
of Polo's text which circulated amongst them. But when Polo's text
appeared in Johann Huttich's Novus Orbis Regionum in 1532, the
section about Lucach was included twice: once in its usual render-
ing, but then mistakenly a second time in the corrupted form
"Beach." A kingdom was born that existed only in maps.
Gerard Mercator, unaware of the error, tried to find a home
for the realm of Beach when he composed his great globe of 1541.
Coincidentally, the concept of a great austral continent then being
raised from dormancy provided a logical answer. Following Polo's
ambiguous itinerary to Beach brought Mercator to the south of
Java, an area then ripe to be seen as part of the unknown southern
continent. His conclusion that Beach was a region of this Terra
Australis was, like many of his blunders, eminently logical.
Hence Nicolosi, depicting northern Australia in a fashion in-
spired by the contour of the Terra Australis of Mercator and others,
still considered it to be all part of greater Beach. Medieval geo-
graphers had erred, so it seemed, in believing Beach to extend so far
south—Abel Tasman had already sailed south around it and thus
exposed that misconception—but that did not dispel the belief that
the land of Beach was real. Indeed, Beach had now been rediscov-
ered, exactly where many maps (for example, Fig. 72) had placed
it. Nicolosi has labeled the sea to the west and north of Beach as
Lantcidol, from I'Antichthones, a term used by Pliny in the first
century to refer to Taprobana (Ceylon), and which came to denote
southern Asian realms in general. The term was transferred to
86 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 80. America, Richard Hakluyt, 1587. Tierra del Fuego is depicted as a series of islands, rather than as a northern promontory of a vast continent, which is absent
altogether. New Guinea is delineated without supposition, thus only the northern coast appears. The Marianas are marked by the corrupted form Latronum (instead
ofLadrones) as on the Miinster map of America and as indeed found in English text as early as Richard Eden's Decades (1555). The map's Pacific otherwise contains the
usual inventory of islands from Spanish voyages. [Martayan Lan, NY]

Southeast Asian waters in the Renaissance because of the erroneous thought to be separate from the main of New Guinea. An East
(but pervasive) belief that the Taprobana of Ptolemy and other India Company expedition in 1791 still believed that western Irian
ancient writers was Sumatra rather than Ceylon. Jaya was a separate island, and only in the course of charting the
South of Beach is Terra di Nuytz, the "Land of Nuytz," after anticipated "strait" was the matter settled. What became known
Pieter Nuyts, an official of the Dutch East India Company. Nuyts as the McCluer Gulf leaves New Guinea intact by a neck as little
was aboard the vessel V Gulden Zeepaardwhich sailed from Holland as 15 kilometers wide.
in mid-1626, discovering part of the western Australian coast
before reaching Batavia in April 1627. Jacob Le Maire
Mallet was typical of many mapmakers in leaving the relation- When Ferdinand Magellan penetrated the strait he discovered at
ship between New Guinea and the long coastline of Carpentaria the tip of the South American mainland, he had no reason to inves-
unknown (Fig. 79), unaware that Torres had sailed through the tigate the land to his left, Tierra del Fuego. His only purpose was
strait now named for him at about the same time that Jansz sailed to pierce through the continent into the Eastern ocean, and having
by its western mouth. Cape York is named Les Onze Mille Vierges succeeded in doing so, he sailed away leaving the nature of Tierra
(Eleven Thousand Virgins) for the medieval tradition of St. Ursula, del Fuego to the imaginations of a century of cosmographers.
the daughter of King Dionotus of Cornwall. To the north, Irian Within a decade of the expeditions return, the dominant view
Jaya (western New Guinea) is depicted ambiguously, as its western of Tierra del Fuego was that it was part of an austral continent,
peninsula was sometimes confused with the island of Seram, or perhaps a modest one as envisioned by Tramezzino or Gastaldi
 Earliest Mapping of Australia and New Zealand 87

Fig. 8 1 . The tracks of Le Maire and Schouten across the south Pacific as far as New Guinea and Halmahera. Le Maire, 1619 (Herrera, 1622).

(Fig. 36), or the vast world hypothesized by Monachus (Fig. 32), Islands." But Mercator's, and in turn Ortelius's, acceptance of the
popularized by Fine (Fig. 33), and codified by Mercator (for austral continent was so influential that scarcely an exception could
example, Ortelius, Fig. 63, and de Jode, Fig. 56). be found in maps printed during the last third of the century.
The consensus was not complete; as Sebastian Miinster wrote The seed of disbelief in the continental Tierra del Fuego was
in A Treatyse of the Newe India, "the land which [Magellan] had on planted by Francis Drake during his circumnavigation of 1577-80.
his right hand [South America], he doubted not to be mainland: Although Drake entered the Pacific by the Strait of Magellan, un-
and that on the left hand [Tierra del Fuego], he supposed to be cooperative winds had first blown him south of its entrance. Before
sailing north again to regain the strait, he was surprised to see open
ocean to the south. A handful of maps composed during the couple
Fig. 82. Cocos and H o m e Islands, Robert Dudley, 1647. [Kauai Fine Arts]
of decades after his return modified the mainstream depiction of
Tierra del Fuego to reflect this, all of them by cartographers who
were English or had some other direct contact with London. First
among these was a map of America in Richard Hakluyt's 1587
translation of Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo (Fig. 80). Hondius
(Fig. 60), who had been resident in England, includes a legend
questioning the matter, while the world map by Wright-Molyneaux
(1599) abandons Terra Australis altogether, save for a brief (Aus-
tralian?) coast below Java. Hondius made further maps depicting
Tierra del Fuego as a series of islands for le Clerc (Fig. 83).
The theorists and fledgling Pacific traders of England may have
found this interesting, but for the entrepreneurs of Holland it was
downright exciting. In the last half decade of the sixteenth century,
independent Dutch voyages had reached the southwest Pacific via
Africa and the Sunda Strait, but when the Dutch East India Com-
pany (VOC) was formed in 1602, it granted itself a monopoly on
all Indies trade via the Cape of Good Hope or through the Strait
of Magellan—the only known routes. Joris Spilbergen, in the
service of the Company, made the first Dutch passage through
the Magellan Strait in his circumnavigation of 1614-16; but just
as he initiated the VOC's prowess through the strait, some inde-
pendent Dutch merchants reasoned that if the Drake-inspired
maps were correct and that they could enter the Pacific by cir-
cumventing the Magellan Strait altogether, they could argue that
they had not violated the Company's monopoly.
With this aspiration, in 1615 a group of Dutch merchants sent
 88 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 83. Pacific Ocean, Jodocus Hondius/Jean le Clerc, 1602. [Martayan Lan, NY]

Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten on a mission whose purpose low, in some places, that the sea flows into the middle of the island
was officially secret, but which business people knew was to enter with the tide"), and despite rough seas tried to reach it, as many of
the Pacific through a new route south of the Strait of Magellan. the crew were suffering from scurvy. With the main vessel a safe
Their path is marked on a world map recording the tracks of both distance from shore, a boat was sent to fetch provisions. The seas
the Le Maire and Spilbergen voyages, published in 1619 (Fig. 85), being too rough for the boat to approach near the island, the sailors
and on a map of the South Pacific detailing the voyage (Fig. 81). anchored offshore and swam the rest of the way. They returned,
In southern South America, one of their two vessels, the Hoorn, though with great difficulty, having collected "watercresses, which
was destroyed when a fire set to remove weed and barnacles flared are very bitter to the taste and good for the scurvy." From this
out of control. Sailing south of the entrance to the strait in their and other remarks (they had stopped in Africa and bartered for
one remaining vessel, the Eendracht, they found a passage between thousands of lemons when scurvy first began to afflict the crew),
Tierra del Fuego and land to their left, which they named Staaten it appears that they had some idea of how to prevent scurvy, a
Land, then continued the maiden rounding of America. To the century and a half before the physician James Lind and explorer
southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego, actually the tip of one of James Cook, who are credited with conquering the disease.
many small islands, they gave the name of their lost ship and the This land they dubbed Honden ("Dog Island"), "having seen
Dutch town, the Hoorn. three Spanish dogs very lean," and determined its position as
When Sir Robert Dudley, an Englishman exiled in Italy, pro- 15° 12' south latitude. This island may have been Puka Puka,
duced his sea atlas in 1646-7, its large scale required mapping the "unfortunate" island of Magellan.
Le Maire's landfalls more explicitly than any other published maps Sailing west four more days, they discovered a larger low island
of the day (Fig. 82). Le Maire and Schouten routed themselves up which they placed at about 14° 35 To 15°, where they hoped to get
along the coast of Chile toward Juan Fernandez Island, where wind better provisions and fresh water, which Dog Island had lacked.
conditions prevented an anchorage, but some water was obtained. "We sailed toward the said island, and in the evening, about a
Heading west into the open Pacific, after about five weeks, on April league from shore, we met a canoe, wherein were four men, quite
10,1616, they sighted a very low, small island with a lagoon ("so naked, red colored, having hair long and black." Le Maire found
 Earliest Mapping ofAustralia and New Zealand 89

Above. Fig. 84. Pacific by Jan Jansson, 1650 (detail). The chain of isles in the lower right are the orphaned islands from the Terra Australis of the le Clerc map (Fig. 83).
Above it are islands discovered by Le Maire, and New Guinea and the western coast of Carpentaria. Overleaf. Fig. 86. Pascaerte vande Zuyd-Zee, chart of the Pacific from
the sea-atlas of Johannes van Loon, a "mathematical practitioner" who had earlier contributed to the pilot books of Jan Jansson (Fig. 84). [Richard B. Arkway, NY]

that the islanders "showed themselves covetous, chiefly of iron, so efforts at killing them, and the arrival of a fresh wind, saw them
as to want to take the nails out of the ship." Some of the crew went vanish. The island was named Vliegen after the tiny flying scourge.
ashore to get supplies, but when two of them were seized by the Plentiful rain the next couple of days allowed them to collect fresh
islanders, muskets were fired, some islanders being shot, the others water, using the ship's sails and other sheets to trap it.
fleeing. It appeared to the crew that the women "scolded their When a large native vessel was encountered in the open ocean,
husbands, as appeared to us, for having behaved so treacherously they fired a shot across its bows, but the islanders knew nothing of
and barbarously to us." They named the island Sonder Grondt
("bottomless island"), "because we could not find in any place
Fig. 85. Spilbergen, 1619. Le Maire's tracks to Batavia (enlarged on inset), and
soundings proper to anchor." This was probably Takaroa and
Spilbergen's back to Holland, are recorded. [Martayan Lan, NY]
Takapoto atolls in the Tuamotus.
Their next discovery, an uninhabited island, brought them
four casks of fresh water, as well as more of the scurvy-fighting
cresses they had acquired on Dog Island, and a wealth of crabs and
shellfish. Anchoring a boat nearby was impossible "on account of
the great surf against the strand," so they remained so far offshore
that "the people could not reach the shore but by swimming and
hauling one another ashore with ropes, and in like manner aboard
the boat," securing four casks of fresh water from a ditch. In
gratitude for the much-needed water, they dubbed this island
Waterlandt, probably the Tuamotuan island of Manihi or Ahe.
Latitude was determined to be 14° 46' south.
Another island with a lagoon was encountered ("within it also
is overflowed with salt water")—perhaps Rangiroa. There a plague
of flies which kept them distracted for a few days until concerted
92 Early Mapping of the Pacific

European maritime protocol and failed to stop. The Dutch then

seized it with the loss of some of its people, and then discovered a
pair of islands. Latitude was set at 16° 10' south—they were in the
northernmost Tongas. One was "a high mountain, almost exactly
of the same figure as one of the Moluccas, full of trees, the greatest
part coconuts, for which reason it was named Cocos Island." This
was Tafihi. The Cocos Islanders brought the Dutchmen coconuts
and supplies, swarming the deck in such numbers and chaos,
grabbing everything in sight and attempting to dislodge the iron
nails from the ship, that the sailors fired muskets stop them. The
islanders laughed at the sailors' musket fire, until one man fell.
The other island of the pair, Niuatoputapu, was dubbed
Verraders (Dudley's Veriaders Hand), meaning "Traitors," after a
ruse by some islanders to attempt to take the ship. This island
is "much longer but lower, and stretches E and W," and is thus
depicted by Dudley without a mountain motif.
Next they sighted Niuafo'ou, a coast they named "Hope Island"
(Dudley's Hand o IGood Hope), in anticipation of its yielding
"water and better refreshments," but after a skirmish with islanders
in fourteen canoes, the company sailed to the southwest, "for there
we expected to find the main land,' referring to the anticipated
southern continent. But after a few days of fruitless sailing, the
specter of a contiguous New Guinea and Terra Australis caused
Schouten to recommend changing course to the north. Should
maps such as that by Ortelius (Fig. 57) prove accurate, they had
to be certain to clear New Guinea to the north, else it would be
"impossible to return to the east on account of the constant east-
erly winds which blow in these parts."
Changing course, however, brought them to their most pleas-
ant encounter of the entire circumnavigation. On May 19, 1616,
the Eendracht reached what they dubbed the Home Islands, Futuna
and Alofi, in the northwest of Tonga, due west of Samoa. Here the
Dutch enjoyed amicable relations with their hosts, allowing in turn
for the visitors' recognition of Pacific culture.
They were surprised at the quality of the islanders' arts. One
evening one of the crew "went to fish by moonlight, and having
caught some fish, went to the king, where he found a troop of fine
young girls, all naked, who danced before the king; one of them
played on a hollow piece of wood, like a pump, which gave some
sound, whereupon the others danced very excellently, and with a
very good grace, to the measure of this playing, so that our people
were astonished to see such a thing amongst the savages." The
Dutch were baffled "to find that a people so barbarous had so
much spirit to be able to observe the cadence and to play on
instruments". The expedition was lavished with supplies at the
Home Islands, feasting and stocking their vessel with fresh water,
hoes, yams, coconuts, and bananas.
From the Home Islands they continued to the west, on June 20
sighting land at 4° 50' south, which was probably Nokumanu,
just north of Ontong Java. The islanders had canoes similar to the
others Le Maire had seen, but these people "were a little blacker
in color," and were the first they had seen in the Pacific with bows

Fig. 87. Sea chart of the southwest Pacific by Frederick de Wit, 1680, after the
1666 map of Goos. Except for Tasmania, placed too far south to appear, the map
gives a good idea of available published data of Australia.
Earliest Mapping of Australia and New Zealand 93
94 Early Mapping of the Pacific

and arrows. June 24 brought them to three low islands which

"appeared green and full of trees"—hence the Green Islands. The
following day, St. John's day, another island was discovered and
named after the saint.
Le Maire was now willing to risk sailing due west into New
Guinea, but the more conservative Schouten again insisted on the
safer route to the north. As they sailed, shorelines of New Ireland,
the Admiralty Islands, and New Guinea were recorded, though not
as individual islands; they knew little of their position other than that
the land to their south was what was presumed to be New Guinea.
European contact was regained in Ternate in the Moluccas.
Though well received by the Dutch there, when they reached
Batavia (Java) in late October 1616, the reception was different.
In the place of the heroes' welcome they might have anticipated,
their cargo and papers were confiscated by the ruthless new presi-
dent of the Dutch East India Company, Jan Coen. Le Maire,
having just led one of the greatest of Dutch voyages of discovery,
was imprisoned for infringing on the Company's monopoly; he
was shipped back to Holland with Spilbergen and died en route.
Strict secrecy was imposed on the new-found strait, and the
publication of maps depicting it was forbidden.
Within a few years, attempts to suppress news of the discovery
had proved futile, and Le Maire had posthumously taken his place
as a Dutch hero. Hessel Gerritsz's 1622 chart of the Pacific (Fig. 76)
flaunts Le Maire's bust alongside those of Balboa and Magellan.
One can follow the faint outline of his voyage from the lower right
corner, passing just south of the Marquesas (the archipelago
immediately to the left of the three vessels off Peru), skirting the
Solomon Islands and on to New Ireland and the Admiralties.
When Le Maire proved that Tierra del Fuego was an island,
Staaten Land briefly held the torch as substantive proof of the
austral continent; but soon that landmass was shown to be even
smaller than Tierra del Fuego. Before the enigmatic southern
continent was abandoned, however, it was blended together with
Hernan Gallego's sentiment that a chain of islands loosely linked
the southern latitudes. In 1602, Jodocus Hondius prepared two
maps for Jean Le Clerc, one of the world, the other of the Pacific
(Fig. 83), both of which fused Gallego's chain of islands into the
austral coastline between New Guinea and Tierra del Fuego.
In the next phase, some mapmakers wiped away the austral
continent but left the chain of islands intact. This was popularized
by Jan Jansson on the map of the Pacific from his sea atlas of 1650
(Fig. 84). The same prototype was adopted by Arnold Colom in
1658 (Fig. 13) and John Seller in 1675 (Fig. 98). Pierre du Val (Fig.
89) integrated it with a Terra Australis coastline that formed the
eastern shores of New Zealand. The concept then fell from favor.
Misdating in these maps' legends accompanying this chain of
islands has led to erroneous theories of an unrecorded voyage by

Fig. 88. Van Keulen, 1684 (ca. 1700). This sea chart typifies the Dutch published
image of the Pacific during this era. T h e southern Pacific contains the usual two
islands of Magellan, along with the various landfalls of Le Maire and Tasman.
Discoveries made by the Spanish in the search for Ophir and Terra Australis are
forgotten; only the Micronesian islands encountered during the search for west-
erly winds are shown on the west, along with the few Spanish discoveries closer
the California coast which would later be identified, if dubiously so, with Hawaii.
[Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd] Overleaf Fig. 89. Southern Pacific, Pierre du Val, 1679
(1684). One sheet of a four-sheet world map. [Martayan Lan, NY]
Earliest Mapping of Australia and New Zealand 95
98 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Gallego; Le Clerc (Fig. 83) records the date as "1570," while

die Inseln Salomonis.;
Jansson (Fig. 84), Seller (Fig. 98), and du Val (Fig. 89) identify
the islands as having been discovered by Gallego in 1576. Although
Alexander Dalrymple, writing in 1770, was surely correct in be-
lieving these to be simple transcription errors for 1567, the dates
have fueled belief that Gallego returned to the South Pacific soon
after the discovery of the Solomons, in 1570 and 1576.

Abel Tasman
Whereas the undertaking of Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten
had been viewed as a threat by the Dutch East India Company,
the next great Dutch exploratory voyage, that of Abel Tasman, was
a Company effort. He was not the innovator that was Le Maire,
yet his Pacific discoveries were more significant, and the voyage
for which he is best remembered was only one of several made
during his long service with the Company.

Above: Fig. 90. Pacific Ocean, Coronelli, 1696. Although the "South Sea" appel-
lation was proven meaningless by the mid-sixteenth century, it stubbornly per-
sisted well into the seventeenth, many mapmakers using it alongside "Pacific";
even today, "South Seas" is understood as a euphemism for the tropical Pacific.
The Pacific between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn is almost exclusively
the realm of Le Maire's discoveries. To the northwest, the new name Di Maria
Ana marks the Marianas, in addition to Magellan's old terms Ladroni and San
Lazaro, the latter having originally designated the Philippines. [Martayan Lan,
NY] Left: Fig. 9 1 . A reasoned, but erroneous attempt to make sense of discoveries
in New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Allain Mallet, 1683.
 Earliest Mapping ofAustralia and New Zealand 99

Fig. 92. Sea chart of the western Pacific, Hendrick Doncker, ca. 1660.
102 Early Mapping of the Pacific

With tidbits of first-hand sightings of the "Southland" below hostile, however, and four of the Dutch crew were killed. Tasman
New Guinea, and a clearer image of western Australia emerging dubbed the place "Murderers Bay."
from encounters by Dutch pilots overshooting their eastward trek Sailing on to the northeast, Tasman now added some southern
across the Indian Ocean en route to Batavia, Abel Tasman was members of the Tongan archipelago to the map—Hooge Pylestert
charged by Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of Batavia, (Pylstaart or Ata), Moddleburgh (Middelburg or 'Eua), Amsterdam
with the task of "finding the remaining unknown part of the (Tongatapu), and Rotterdam (Nomuka). Next he became the first
terrestrial globe." The strategy, simply put, was to make a wide known European to enter Fijian waters, naming the group Prince
counter-clockwise reconnaissance around the southwest Pacific, William's Islands.
sailing first west and south in the Indian Ocean. The southern The first printed map devoted exclusively to the islands of the
leg of the journey was to definitively establish whether the South- Pacific, rather than the entire ocean and its defining continental
land was part of an austral continent, and the northern, return coastlines, is the 1661 Pascaerte vande Zuyd-Zeefrom the sea-atlas
segment to search for the Solomon Islands and replicate the of Johannes van Loon (Fig. 86). Oriented with east at the top, the
course of Le Maire, a chart of whose he carried onboard. map's three prominent vertical lines are the equator (center),
In August 1642, Tasman left Batavia and sailed west to Tropic of Cancer (left), and Tropic of Capricorn (right).
Mauritius, then south, then east. Along the eastward trek he These lines, coincidentally, compartmentalize Pacific discover-
encountered a land which he named for van Diemen, but which ies into historical groups. To the south (right) of the Tropic of
subsequently was renamed for him (Tasmania). They did not Capricorn lie only Tasman's discoveries in Tasmania and New
follow the coast northward to determine its extent or continuity Zealand; between the Tropic of Capricorn and the equator lay
with the Southland, and never saw the land's people, though they principally those islands discovered by Le Maire and by Tasman,
saw evidence that the land was inhabited. along with the inevitable I. de S. Petro and I. de los Tiburones from
Continuing eastward, on December 13 Tasman "had sight of a Magellan; and the islands lying between the equator and Tropic of
very lofty and mountainous country to the SE." To the northeast, Cancer are those derived from the various Spanish voyages of the
"a spacious bay, three or four miles in breadth" was found where sixteenth century: Miracomo Vaz, Salteadores, Vesinos, Barbudos,
they saw "men of a thick set robust make, and very rough voices." Iardines, Corales, Reys, and Nadadores (see Chapter 10 for identi-
Tasman had just effected the European discovery of New Zealand, fications). Notably absent are the Solomons, or any trace of the
which he named Staeten Landt. The natives "several times blew an voyages of Quiros or Mendana. The van Loon map was copied by
instrument which had something of the sound of a trumpet," in Peter Goos five years later, turned around so that west is at the top.
answer to which Tasman had his own trumpeter reply. The people Other Dutch charts recycle essentially the same Oceania data,
seemed to be "disposed to a friendly intercourse," and when they differing markedly in presentation but little in content. French
approached Tasman's vessels, white linen was waved in friendship, geographers of the same period, however, relied less on the Dutch
and a futile attempt was made to communicate with them using formula, poring through data and finding new ways to make it
vocabulary of the "Solomon" (Home?) Islands. The Maoris were into a coherent whole.
Whereas van Loon's chart records only what was known of
Le Maire's discoveries, Mallet's Isles de Salomon tries to interpret
Previous pages: Fig. 93. This anonymous chart is unusual for its interpretation of
them (Fig. 91). Mallet attempts to correlate the landfalls of Quiros
the Gulf of California, forming a straight highway to open northern seas, reflect-
ing the hope—or fear, depending on who commands it—of a quick, easy route and Mendana to Tasman's discoveries and to the question of an
between the Pacific and Europe. The Solomon Islands are here envisioned just austral continent. Tasman's discoveries in New Zealand, the solid
off the coast of a greater New Guinea—Terra Australis landmass. Teixeira school,
ca. 1632. [Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro] Belour. Fig. 94. Le Maire's vessel
coast in the lower left, and Mendafia's discoveries in the Solomon
approaching the H o m e Islands (Wallis and Futuna) in 1616. (Gottfried, 1640). Islands, the series of sharply angled coasts in the middle, are shown
as being possibly contiguous. Since New Zealand was unknown
on the north, the Solomons unknown on the south, and since
Mendana had underestimated the Solomons' distance from Peru
(thus offsetting them to the east), this was not an unreasonable
hypothesis about two lands which in truth lie about 3000 kilo-
meters apart. The shores discovered by Quiros in 1605-6 serve as
the amorphous void linking them (Terre de Quir). At the top is the
horizon, as though the map placed the viewer at a 45° angle above
the earth. Such an "aerial" perspective had been commonly used
in city views since the sixteenth century, but was a novelty in maps.
Du Val also associates Quiros's landfall with New Zealand
(Fig. 89), and adds to it the austral continent identified with
Gallego's discoveries in 1576, complete with the chain of islands
dotting its coast. The Venetian cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli
(Fig. 90) offers a more advanced depiction of northern Australia
and a more reserved interpretation of the southern Pacific. The
western shores of New Zealand that Tasman skirted are shown
 Earliest Mapping ofAustralia and New Zealand 103

Above. Fig. 95. Pacific Ocean from the sea-atlas of Frederick de Wit, 1680. In 1745, the Solomon Islands and Quiros's "Land of the Holy Ghost" were added to the map.
Belour. Fig. 96. Northern promontory of Terra Australis comprising Dutch discoveries in Australia (t'Landt Eendracht), Marco Polo's Southeast Asian kingdoms of
Maletur and Lucach, and "Beach", a transcription error of Lucach. Detail from a map by Hendrik van Langren, ca. 1599 (ca. 1625). [Gowrie Galleries]

without emendation, but the vestige of a Terra Australis to the east

coast leads the eye to assume that New Zealand is part of some
large austral land. Tasmania lies by itself, with only a trace of the
southern Australian coast shown.
Of the several publishers of sea-atlases in Amsterdam during the
latter part of the seventeenth century, Hendrick Doncker (Fig. 92)
put the most effort into improving his charts as better data became
available from the many Dutch voyages that added incrementally
to the mapping of the Australian coastline. The principal remain-
ing gap, the east coast through the upper portion of the Cape York
Peninsula, would not be remedied until the first voyage of Cook.
Some of the other unknowns, such as the southwest coast near
what is now Perth and much of the southern coast, would have
to wait to the turn of the nineteenth century, and the Australian
interior challenged surveyors through the turn of the twentieth.
104 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 97. Carte de la Mer du Sud, Nicolas de Fer, 1713. The most lavish map of the Pacific published on the eve of the great exploratory voyages of the eighteenth
century is this work of Nicolas de Fer, 1713. Although separately published, a copy was included in the Atlas Historique of Henri Chatelain six years later, in which
form it was widely disseminated. De Fer has displaced the mischievous Solomons so far to the east that they lie east of northern California. Here the relative individu-
ality of French mapmakers, compared with the uniformity of the Dutch makers who avoided such contentious shores, is evident: de Fer's countryman, Pierre du Val,
 Earliest Mapping of Australia and New Zealand 105

had three and a half decades earlier (Fig. 89) placed the Solomons virtually contiguous with New Guinea, a difference of opinion of about 10000 kilometers. Cluttered
vignettes shield de Fer from having to make any guesses as to the relationship between New Zealand and an austral continent, or between Tasmania and Australia.
Just to the southeast of New Guinea are the shores discovered by Quiros, which de Fer infers might be the eastern end of Carpentaria. Above New Guinea, de Fer
tapped the map of Father Klein (Fig. 179) which attempted to chart the "undiscovered" Carolines with data gleaned from islanders. [Martayan Lan, NY]
Chapter 6
The Age of Enlightenment

Following the voyage of Tasman, the mapping of central and engraved earlier in the century or copied from such maps, not
eastern Oceania began an eight-decade hiatus. There was, however, because their makers had an opposing opinion on the matter.
one new, large island added to the eastern Pacific during this time: To see how California became a Pacific island, we need to look
California. From its published beginnings on two title pages in back to Hernan Cortes and his discovery of lower California in the
1622, this fallacy was almost universally accepted during the 1530s. Cortes, who had probably expected to encounter any of the
second half of the seventeenth century. Ironically, maps published islands he imagined coddled in a gulf between America and Asia,
during this time that depicted California correctly as a peninsula sent Francisco de Ulloa to investigate the discovery. Ulloa deter-
(for example, Fig. 52) did so because they were "antiquated," mined it to be a continental peninsula, and the accuracy of the
 The Age of Enlightenment 107

Opposite. Fig. 98. Pacific Ocean, John Seller, 1675. Seller appears to have worked from the Jansson map of 1650 (detail, Fig. 84), adding to it the discoveries of Tasman
and modifying the island of California to follow later models, such as that of Goos, above. [Library of Congress] Above. Fig. 99. Island of California, Peter Goos, 1666.
Below California, the islands I. De S. Thomas, Roca Partida, Ihla, and Ambladaare are from the voyage of Ruy Lopez de Villalobos. [Martayan Lan, NY]

Gulf of California on some mid-sixteenth maps suggests that some This interpretation was rare; conventional maps, such as that by
Spanish pilot may have sailed the full gulf by then. But when Peter Goos (Fig. 99), simply detach California, making the strait
Francis Drake circumnavigated the world in 1577-80, Spanish a shortcut to the northern Pacific but not a means to circumvent
authorities feared the English might discover a secret route through the continent. Not until a 1701 map of Father Eusebio Francisco
the California Sea and above North America, dramatically shorten- Kino, who had been convinced by circumstantial evidence that
ing the trip between the Pacific Coast and Europe. Since such a California was part of the mainland, did mainstream mapmakers
route could threaten Spain's entire American empire, the strait was begin to revert back to a peninsular configuration, and not until
sought by the Spanish so that it could be exploited and fortified 1746, when Father Ferdinando Consag led an expedition to the
before their rivals did so. The myth of California as an island was mouth of the Colorado River, was the matter officially settled.
borne from a 1602 expedition sent to explore the California coast California was still widely accepted to be an island in Mexico
under Sebastian Vizcaino. According to an account of the voyage in 1727, when Mendoza y Gonzalez's map (Fig. 100), the first of
by Father Antonio de la Ascension, California was separate from the Pacific published in the New World, was printed. The crude
the main of North America. engraving accompanied a treatise recording an eclipse of the sun
One Iberian geographer envisioned the most alarming possi- of March 22 of that year, explaining how longitude might be cal-
bility when composing the chart shown in Fig. 93—a literal culated using the path of such an eclipse.
interpretation of the Gulf of California forming a clear strait to The map's vertical lines represent hours of the eclipse's path
the Arctic seas and an easy route over North America to Europe. rather than degrees, with the westernmost point, saliendo el sol
108 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 100. Pacific Ocean by Juan Antonio de Mendoza y Gonzalez, printed in Mexico in 1727. The small book refers frequently to the map to explain its premises.
Lengthy explanations ask the reader to, for example, "refer to the map ... and find the place in the Equinoctial in 203 gr. of longitude, and I find myself with a ship
south of Acapulco, and see, that at 2:30 P M the moon touches the side of the ship, or southern edge of the sun...."

("the leaving of the sun") passing through New Guinea. East of occasionally "lose" one when offered cash by an outsider, and some
that is the path of the sun during maxima obscuracion naciendo wealthy Dutch individuals were given copies of charts with the
el sol ("maximum darkening of the rising sun"), which occurs over trust, not always honored, that they be for their personal reference
the Solomon Islands, and Quiri, a single large island representing only. In the early eighteenth century, with VOC supremacy in the
Quiros s discoveries. The only other island identified in the Pacific Indies waning and its ability to maintain secrecy undermined,
is Nadadores ("the swimmers'), north of New Guinea, discovered makers of published maps began to draw on its archives. The Van
in 1565 by Alonso de Arellano of the Legazpi expedition. It is re- Keulen firm, and former Company employee Francois Valentijn
vealing of the often haphazard nature of early Pacific mapping that (Fig. 102), were among the first to do so.
this island, probably the small atoll of Lib near Kwajalein, should The Low Countries had become the masters of the printed
be the one north Pacific island identified aside from California. map trade with the publication of Ortelius's Theatrum in 1570 in
Antwerp, the center of the trade shifting to Amsterdam at the turn
The English Map Trade of the seventeenth century with the entry of such publishers as
Holland's endeavors in the Pacific were essentially commercial, its Blaeu, Hondius, and Jansson. Printed sea-atlases of the world were
exploration methodical and deliberate. The earlier, dream-driven first published about 1650, most with a general chart of the Pacific,
ventures of the Spanish had cost dearly and added precious little of such as those by Jansson (1650, Fig. 84), van Loon (1661, Fig. 86),
economic justification to the map. During the seventeenth century, de Wit (1680, Figs. 87 and 95), and Van Keulen (1684, Fig. 88).
whereas Holland's incremental exploration of Australia, neighbor- Most of these charts are geographically closely related, depicting the
ing to its Indies empire, made practical sense, blind reconnaissance same data in similar conception despite their differences in presen-
through far-flung ocean did not. tation and orientation. Such general charts veiled their ignorance
The East India Company (VOC) did boast increasingly refined of the shape of individual islands because the small scale rendered
charts of Australia and of the Indonesian islands upon which their them mere dots. Large-scale charts of Oceania were impractical
trade was dependent. Although the Company had since its begin- until the latter eighteenth century, the charts of Robert Dudley (for
nings prohibited the publication of these charts, an officer would example, Fig. 82) being among the few to attempt to extrapolate
 The Age of Enlightenment 109

*»\:

Fig. 101. A Thai map accompanying the Traiphum ("three worlds"), a Theravada Buddhist cosmology and cosmography. The map dates from 1776, the Thonburi
period, after the pillaging of Ayuthaya by Burma in 1767 and before the court relocated to Bangkok. Clearly influenced by Western maps, it stretches from Japan to
India, with east and south at the top. Orientation and scale are wildly inconsistent. [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preufiischer Kulturbesitz Museum fur Indische Kunst]

an island's rudimentary outlines from the scant evidence available. printed sea-atlas for English commercial vessels for much of the
England produced little of Pacific interest during the first three- eighteenth century. As with the Dutch atlases of the period, this
quarters of the seventeenth century. Gabriel Tatton's published map atlas impacted the mapping of the Asian islands of the Pacific,
of 1600 (Fig. 64) had quicldy became dated with the voyages of but not of still-reclusive Oceania.
Le Maire and Tasman, and when John Speed produced a general Seller's printed sea-atlas had to compete with an existing, pro-
atlas of the world in 1627, its coverage of the Pacific was limited to lific community of makers of manuscript charts in England, loosely
maps of the world and America. These repeated the data of Dutch referred to as the "Thames School." These manuscript works
maps, as did a map of Southeast Asia added in 1676. tended to reflect a bit more independence from Dutch prototypes
John Seller, an instrument maker and teacher of navigation, than the printed newcomers. Among their most prodigious makers
produced the first English printed sea-atlas in about 1675. Despite was William Hack, who became noted for large-scale atlases of the
Seller's claims that his charts drew from "the latest and best discov- Eastern navigation, containing charts of the western Pacific such
eries, that have been made by diverse able and experienced navi- as that illustrated in Fig. 103 of part of the Philippines.
gators, of our English nation," his map of the Pacific (Fig. 98) But England's major contributions to Pacific mapping began
owed its data to Dutch prototypes. with the theoretical and thematic. At about the same time Seller
Seller's financial woes led to his collaboration with two other set the stage for the English printed sea-atlas, the English scientist
chartmakers, William Fisher and John Thornton, and ultimately Edmund Halley set about mapping such non-geographic data as
to a new atlas, The English Pilot, which became the standard winds and magnetic variation.

Scientists and Buccaneers

Halley was deprived by chance of birth from the cosmographic
endeavor most dear to him, in which the Pacific would have played
an important role—observing a "transit of Venus," that is, witness-
ing the path of the planet Venus across the sun. Since the earth
rotates, the apparent speed of Venus's path across the sun would
vary according to one's position; thus it was theorized that if the
transit could be accurately timed at several points, one could use
the differences to calculate the distance to the sun, and even afford,
according to a theory of Kepler, an understanding of the size of the
universe itself. Such a transit had occurred in 1639, before Halley's
birth, and would not occur again until 1761.
Halley became intrigued with the idea when recording a transit
of Mercury on Saint Helena in 1677. Mercury's parallax was in-
adequate for the experiment, but Venus was larger and closer.
"We therefore recommend again and again," he implored in an
article in the Philosophical Transactions of 1716, "to the curious
Fig. 102. Taiwan, from Francois Valentijns OudenNieuw Oost-Indien (1724-6). investigators of the stars to whom, when our lives are over, these
110 Early Mapping of the Pacific
 The Age of Enlightenment 111

observations are entrusted," that the transit be carefully recorded.

But when the day came, the efforts of observers in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and Newfoundland were ruined by clouds, wars, and
Venus's skimming too close to the edge of the sun.
But transits of Venus occur in close pairs, and thus the second
transit in that cycle, which would be on June 3, 1769, was now all
the more significant. Responsibility for measuring the transit from
Oceania would fall to James Cook on his first Pacific voyage. We
will return to this posthumous influence of Halley and new-found
significance of the Pacific in Chapter 8.
No such cosmic timetable delayed Halley's contributions to
terrestrial mapping. In 1686, he published a map of the trade
winds in the Philosophical Transactions, which included data in the
western Pacific. Two Atlantic voyages of 1698 and 1700 enabled
him to record compass variation, and his first "isogonic" map re-
cording his readings (1701) was limited to that ocean, but in 1702
he extended his chart to the western Pacific using data, according
to text accompanying his chart, "collected from the comparison of
several journals of voyages lately made in the Indian Seas." The sum
of his research was published in a world map by Reinier and Joshua
Ottens (Fig. 104), showing winds and magnetic variation through
the Indian and Pacific oceans, drawing on data principally from
Halley's countryman, William Dampier.
Dampier's recording of meteorological and other non-
geographic information tapped by Halley, his inquisitive nature,
and fastidious attention to details of indigenous peoples and their
environments, foreshadowed the scientific expeditions of the eight-
eenth century. He made four voyages to the Pacific: the first an
east-west crossing in the course of his adventures as a buccaneer;
the second an official voyage to the southwest Pacific, via Africa,
won with the clout garnered from the printed account of his buc-
caneer days; and the third and fourth east-west crossings on private
plundering enterprises, the last as pilot under Woodes Rogers. Of
these four voyages, the first helped add so-called Davis Land to the
Pacific map; the second, the only voyage which was not a circum-
navigation, contributed to the mapping of Australia, eastern
Indonesia, and the Melanesian islands near New Guinea; and the
remaining two voyages added nothing to Pacific cartography, but
inadvertently placed the Pacific on the literary "map."
Dampier's account of his adventures as a buccaneer, A New
Voyage Round the World, reached bookshops in 1697. In it he
discusses conflicting Spanish and English figures for the breadth
of the crossing from America to Guam, and notes that only once
during their own crossing did they see any fish, which was when
they were in the vicinity of rocks indicated on their charts, but not
seen. A two-page chart correlated various coordinates in his trans-
Pacific sail to winds at those positions. The volume began with a
world map by Hermann Moll, which depicts a little diagonal trace
of land in the southeast Pacific that had been reported by his
buccaneer friend Edward Davis; over the decades that followed,
the scant line would take many an explorer on a wild chase.
Dampier's second voyage, the official scientific expedition,

Fig. 103. Palawan, Mindoro, Luzon, and intervening islands, from a manuscript
atlas of William Hack, London, ca. 1690. The map is oriented with east at the
top. [Library of Congress]
112 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 104. Halley's map recording winds and magnetic variation, Ottens, 1740. [Martayan Lan, NY]

could have proven a watershed event had he been allowed to follow Dampier again reached Juan Fernandez, where Selkirk had man-
his own ambitious plans for intensive exploration of Australia, aged to eke out an existence as the island's sole human inhabitant.
and had his abilities as a commander been equal to those of his Selkirk's saga of isolation became known through the publica-
seamanship. With one unworthy vessel and a small crew of largely tion of Rogers' account of the voyage, from which the story was
incompetent sailors, he sailed to western and northern Australia, extracted and popularized in a couple of separate accounts, and
continuing along northern New Guinea, which like most of his finally gained immortality in the form of Daniel Defoe's 1719
contemporaries he presumed to be part of Australia. fictionalized Robinson Crusoe, which included a fanciful map of
The voyage's most significant changes to the prevailing map the island. In an unusual instance of geographic nomenclature
were in the Bismarck Archipelago. After rounding the western following fiction, Robinson Crusoe today denotes the main island
New Guinea coast to the north, Dampier turned east, out of sight of Juan Fernandez. The island lying 160 kilometers to the west is
of land until reaching New Hanover, in the northern Bismarcks. now named for the real-life Crusoe, Alejandro Selkirk.
He sailed south along the eastern shores of New Hanover and New Seven years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe, the Pacific
Ireland, believing that these were parts of New Guinea, and when was again the canvas of a novelist's pen. In 1726, an Irish clergy-
he reached a gap in the shoreline, he believed it to be a bay and man named Jonathan Swift published a story of four voyages by
named it St. George's, though this was actually the strait separating one Lemuel Gulliver to "remote nations" during the period 1699
New Ireland from New Britain. The next strait to the south, that to 1715—Gullivers Travels. On the first voyage, shipwreck puts
separating New Britain from Umboi Island, he found and sailed Gulliver ashore in Lilliput (Fig. 106) in the southwestern Pacific.
through; but he supposed Umboi to be part of New Guinea, and Swift maps Lilliput to the north and west of Tasmania, yet with no
all the land to the north to be a single island, rather than three. trace of Australia in sight. But the absence of Australia is under-
Nonetheless, this was a first step in the process of sorting out the standable, since Tasmania is placed on the same meridian as the
complex islands directly east of New Guinea. Sunda Strait—a literary license of about 45° longitude.
On the second voyage, blown off course east of Japan, he finds
Literary Pacific Landscapes himself on Brobdingnag, a land jutting into the Pacific and con-
On Dampier s third voyage, internal squabblings among the crew nected to the Northwest Coast of America by a narrow neck (Fig.
and concern about the seaworthiness of the vessel led the quarter- 107). Here Swift includes mapmakers in his satire, using a then-
master, Alexander Selkirk, being left behind on Juan Fernandez common argument for the existence of Terra Australis, spherical
(Fig. 105). Four and a half years later, at the end of January 1709, balance, to "prove' a great northern landmass: "From whence I
 The Age of Enlightenment 113

ward for Wind, to bring him about Tierra del Fuego, the Lat. of 27
South, about 500 leagues from Copayapo, on the Coast of Chili,
he saw a small sandy Island just by him; and that they saw to the
Westward of it a long tract of pretty high Land, tending away to
the North West out of sight. This might probably be the Coast of
Terra Australis Lncognita!"
Dampier's influence was quick, Davis's coast being found on
some French maps within the year. J. B. Nolin's depiction from
about 1740 (Fig. 68) is typical: a scant northeast coast of an in-
determinate landmass, accompanied by "land discovered by the
English captain David," as the French often called him (Johann
Reinhold, in his translation of Bougainville's account, complained
that the French were cavalier about such things). One of the islands
discovered in the search for Davis Land was Easter Island; Buache
(back endpaper), who already knew of the discovery, places the two
in close proximity. Davis's sighting could, in fact, have been Easter
Island, its longitude poorly estimated.

The European Discovery of Easter Island and Samoa

The eighteenth-century renaissance in the mapping of Oceania
began with Jacob Roggeveen. Following a successful career with
the Dutch East India Company, Roggeveen turned his energy to
pursue a dream he inherited from his father: a voyage westward
across the ocean in search of the elusive austral continent, which
had now taken on a new dimension with the reports of Davis Land.
The V O C granted Roggeveen a fleet of three vessels for the
endeavor, sailing from Texel in August 1721 and entering the
Pacific through the Le Maire Strait. After sailing to higher than
60° S and failing to find Terra Australis, he headed to Juan Fernan-
cannot but conclude, that our Geographers of Europe are in a great dez, and then hunted for Davis's sighting. Although it was not to
Error, by supposing nothing but Sea between Japan and California: be found, by continuing generally west he discovered a heretofore
For it was ever my Opinion, that there must be a Balance of Earth unknown island which indeed lay at 27° S, the same latitude which
to counterpoise the great Continent of Tartary; and therefore they
ought to correct their Maps and Charts, by joining this vast Tract
Fig. 105. Juan Fernandez,
of Land to the Northwest Parts of America; wherein I shall be ready
from Tobias Smollett, A
to lend them my assistance." compendium of authentic and
The third voyage brings him to the seas east of Japan, where entertaining voyages, 1756.
Smollett, a novelist and
he encounters Laputa, an island that hovers above the ground and
historian, drew from the
moves about by magnetism. Below it, on the surface of the earth, is maps of Thomas Jeffries.
an island called Balnibarbi. From there he goes to Glubbdubdrib, T h e Juan Fernandez islands
were encountered when
realm of a sorcerer, and Lugnagg, thence to Japan (Fig. 108). Spanish pilots sailing be-
A mutiny by his crew puts Gulliver ashore on Houyhnhnms tween Peru and Chile veered
away from the coast to catch
Land on his fourth and final voyage (Fig. 109). The island lies
advantageous currents and
south of Australia, which Swift's map identifies with the discoveries winds. Their recorded dis-
of Pieter Nuyts in 1627 {Nuyts Land) and those named for the covery occurred late in 1574,
when Fernandez gave the
vessel Leeuwin in 1622 (Lewins Land).
names San Felix and San
Ambor to two of its isles.
Further Searches for Terra Australis They first appear on printed
maps on Ortelius's 1587 map
The Pacific land reported by Edward Davis, Dampier's buccaneer of America (Fig. 57), the
friend, proved to be as elusive as the fanciful islands conjured by name Ambor corrupted to
Jonathan Swift. Davis appears to have been a capable and relatively Nabor, and the discovery
date misstated as 1572.
benevolent pirate, but was illiterate and his influence principally
second-hand—thus the importance of Dampier's 1697 narrative
recording that in 1687 Davis had discovered what might be
the coast of the long-sought southern continent. Sailing in the
Batchelors Delight out of the Galapagos, "standing thence South-
114 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 106. Lilliput, from Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, 1726 {Travels into Several Fig. 107. The mythical land of Brobdingnag is a mainland peninsula above the
Remote Nations of the World, 1735). [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints] island of California. Swift, 1726 (1735). [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints]

Dampier's 1697 book had assigned Davis Land. In recognition of probably the atoll of Makatea, in the Tuamotus.
the holiday on which it was discovered, they named it Easter Island. These were worthwhile discoveries, but not the object for which
Roggeveen next reached several islands, some uninhabited, the expedition had been funded. Yet although its true goal, the
some with hostile people; they were at the northern Tuamotus. southern continent, had not been achieved, many of the crew were
Their vessel, the African Gallery, was wrecked on rocks off one dangerously ill, so the decision was made to abort the mission and
of the Tuamotus, which island consequently inherited the name veer N W in order to return home via known routes through the
Disastrous (Schadelijk) Island (Takapoto?). These islands were East Indies. That decision to "end" the exploration brought them
"adorned with a delightful verdure and covered with trees, amongst to major discoveries. The first discovery, however, was not recog-
which were plenty of coconut." nized as such and so added nothing to maps. Two islands were
Scurvy now began to afflict the crew with such severity that sighted, one "very high, perhaps 8 leagues in circuit," while the
when an island "of good height and beautiful" was sighted, musket other appeared much lower and was "of a reddish land, without
fire was used to assure patience from the Tuamotans to allow some trees, extending, according to our conjectures, to 11° S latitude."
of the Dutch to swim ashore and gather supplies. The next day, They were probably passing Bora Bora and Maupiti, anticipating
"not only to gather beneficial herbs, but also to endeavor to make the formal European discovery of the Society Islands by more than
some beneficial discovery," they returned in greater numbers and four decades; but Roggeveen wrongly deduced that these islands
had a civil, but tense, meeting with the king. The islanders appar- were the Cocos and Veriaders islands of Le Maire.
ently tried to trick them into a valley where they could be stoned After swells diverted their vessels to the north, they set their
from above. Despite the bloody incident, the life-saving sacks sails for the west and then "discovered several islands all at once."
of vegetables Roggeveen acquired led them to name the island The islands "appeared of a very agreeable prospect, and, in fact, on
"Refreshment" (Verwikking). Placed at 16° S latitude, it was approaching them, we found they were furnished with fine fruit
 The Age of En ligh tenment 115

Fig. 108. Japan, Hokkaido (Iesso), Company's Land, and mythical Lugnagg, Fig. 109. Houyhnhnms Land, inhabited by wild humans (yahoos) and civilized
Laputa, and Balnibarbi. Swift, 1726 (1735). [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints] horses (Houyhnhnms). Swift, 1726 (1735). [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints]

trees, with all sorts of herbs, legumens, and plants." Several thou- far north. Longitude was judged to be 200 /Q 55' E (using the
sand men and women swarmed the shore, all of them "white, and convention of Tenerife in the Canary Islands as prime), which was
not different in this respect from us Europeans, except that some about five degrees too far west.
amongst them have their skins burnt by the heat of the sun." They Roggeveen found the islanders eager for iron, which he thought
had become the European discoverers of Samoa. Roggeveen found they used to make their canoes. A king in the eastern Samoas, in
these people to be "gay in their conversation, gentle and humane contrast, was principally interested in obtaining beads. That king,
towards one another, without the least appearance of savagery." "sitting in a canoe, and having by him a young woman of 18 or 19
From the waist down the people were covered with "fringes, and years, whose neck was encircled by a string of oblong blue beads,
with a kind of stuff of silk, curiously woven" (tapa), and "around asked the Mate by signs if he had any such, pointing to the said
their neck they wore strings of all kinds of odoriferous flowers." string." The Samoans may have acquired such Europeans beads
Samoa was "the most civilized and honest nation we saw in the through trade with Tonga.
islands of the South Sea." The search for the austral continent, this time in the guise of
The name of Bauman, captain of the vessel Tienhoven, was Davis Land, had like many before him taken Roggeveen on a
bestowed upon the easternmost Samoan group, the Manua islands, wild chase through the southern Pacific. The folly, however, had
and the vessel's name was given to Tutuila, the main island of what added Easter Island and Samoa to the map, and helped initiate
is now American Samoa. Roggeveen had difficulty fixing Tutuilas the great period of Pacific exploration that blossomed a few dec-
latitude "because the shadow of the horizon of the graduated arc ades later. Roggeveen's cartographic influence can be seen on some
fell on the land, by which it was prevented from being brought into general maps by the mid-eighteenth century, such as that of Buache
a precise agreement and conformity with the horizon of the sky." (back endpaper), although it was quickly overshadowed by that of
The result of their attempts was 13° 44' S, about a half degree too the more glamorous voyages that followed.
116 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 110. Cases de Naturels a Apia, d'Urville, 1842. Houses along the shore in Apia, on the Samoan island of Upolu, as seen by d'Urville when he visited and mapped
the islands in 1828 on his second Pacific command. Samoan houses were relatively uniform in design, and raised above the ground by posts. The roof thatching was
supported by rafters made from several pieces lashed together to achieve the necessary curve, then intersected with ribs and secured to the posts. [Kauai Fine Arts].

Fig. 111. A section of a map published with the account of Anson's voyage (1748), based on a Spanish chart he acquired during the circumnavigation. La Mesa,
LosMajos, and La Disgraciada are among islands some believed represent early Spanish discovery of Hawaii (see page 154).
 The Age of En ligh tenment 117

A Renaissance of English Voyages in early September 1846, complained that his ship should have
In contrast to Roggeveen, George Anson's circumnavigation of been actually on "Manuel Rodriguez shoal, as laid down in the
the world in 1740-4 did little to enrich knowledge of the Pacific, chart.... This danger has been copied into all modern charts from
retracing as it did Spanish routes across the ocean and making no that taken by Ld Anson on board the galleon 'Nuestra Sinora de
discoveries. The printed account of his voyage was influential by Capadonga." Captain Martin theorized that a dead whale or ship-
virtue of its popularity Its map of the Philippines, showing the wreck had been mistaken for a rock.
route of the Spanish galleons, was widely copied, and its charts Spain continued to be influential in the mapping of Micronesia
of the northern Pacific (Fig. I l l ) unduly influenced pilots, largely and the Philippines. The 1727 map by Francisco Diaz Romero and
by virtue of their Spanish origins. Anson's observations were some- Antonio de Chandia (Fig. 112) included political and navigational
times worthwhile, for example, that compass variation agreed information, and the galleon route between Manila and Acapulco.
closely with that predicted by Halley forty years earlier. While showing a gradual maturing of the mapping of the central
Perhaps most interesting to its contemporary audience, it and northern Philippine islands, its flawed depiction of Mindanao
reproduced two of the charts Anson pilfered from the Manila reveals how poorly the south was known to the Spanish, even at
Galleon and thus helped disseminate Spanish geographic know- this relatively late date. Seven years later, the more famous and
ledge about the north Pacific. As the account explains, in addition influential map of Pedro Murillo Velarde was published, eclipsing
to its substantial booty of riches "there were taken on board the the impact of those that came before it.
galeon several draughts and journals [and] a chart of all the Ocean, The four-year period 1765-9 witnessed a remarkable flourish-
between the Philippines and the coast of Mexico, which was what ing of activity by English vessels in Polynesia: those of Byron,
was made use of by the galeon in her own navigation. A copy of Wallis, Carteret, and Cook. In contrast to Anson's voyage of a
the draught, corrected in some places by our own observation, is quarter century earlier, these were true exploratory expeditions.
here annexed, together with the route of the galeon traced thereon Mapmakers now had an unprecedented bounty of new shores to
from her own journals." place in Oceania, many charted in sufficient detail to allow a sep-
These Spanish charts caused more confusion than they reme- arate map for each. The richest published source of new maps was
died, however, and even a century later pilots were still laboring Hawkesworth's 1773 An Account of the Voyages undertaken by the
over the errors Anson had introduced with them. Captain Henry Order of His present Majesty, an inept record of the voyages of
Martin of the British ship Grampus, en route from Hawaii to Tahiti Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and the first voyage of Cook. Illustrated

Fig. 112. T h e Philippines and western Micronesia, Francisco Diaz Romero, 1727. [Rodrigue Levesque]
118 Early Mapping of the Pacific

here are two contrasting examples, one from Hawkesworth's right on the Hawkesworth map; on the Zatta, they are the islands
Voyages (Fig. 113) which focuses closely on, as its title states, the of Contratempo). Two more islands were found to the west; a
"Islands discover'd in the Neighbourhood of Otaheite," and a beach was secured after killing a few of the islanders, allowing the
general map published by Antonio Zatta in Venice (Fig. 115). crew to resupply. These he named King George Islands, which were
First—but least influential—was the voyage commanded by Takaroa and Takapoto (not to be confused with Tahiti, later named
John Byron, an alumnus of Anson's circumnavigation. Sent to for the same sovereign by Wallis). Byron's tracks as recorded on the
search for a northwest passage in the American Northwest, after Hawkesworth map end at his discovery of Rangiroa, his "Prince of
leaving the Strait of Magellan he judged his vessel to be in too poor Wales Island," where he did not try to land. One of the Kiribati
condition to withstand the assigned voyage, so he changed his sites Islands was discovered and named for himself—perhaps Nukunau.
to the south Pacific. After refreshing at Masafuero (the westmost Next, the two green tracks on the Zatta map was a fleet of two
of the Juan Fernandez islands), Byron (yellow tracks on the Zatta ships commanded by Samuel Wallis in the Dolphin, the same
map) sailed northwest to catch the trade winds. On June 7, 1765 vessel in which Byron had just returned, and Philip Carteret in
he sighted two islands, Napuka and Tepoto of the northern Tua- the Swallow, an inferior and ill-equipped sloop. After they passed
motus. Being deterred from landing by forbidding islanders, he through the Magellan Strait in April 1767, a storm engulfed Car-
dubbed the pair "Islands of Disappointment" (straddling the top teret's vessel, and was presumed by Wallis to be lost. Wallis s first

Fig. 113. A Chart of the Islands discover'd in the Neighbourhood of Otaheite, Hawkesworth, 1773. W h e n Cook set out from Plymouth on his first circumnavigation in
August 1768, no effort had been spared in preparing the Endeavour for the voyage—except, in hindsight, for the chronometer, newly invented by the eccentric genius
John Harrison. But the chronometer, which would have facilitated Cook far more accurate mapping of his Pacific landfalls, had not yet been approved by the Admiralty.
Cook entered the area of the Tuamotus and Society islands at a latitude between those followed by Byron and Wallis. T h e first few of the Tuamotus he reached, Vahitahi,
Akiaki, and Hao, had, unknown to Cook, already been found a year earlier by Bougainville. Cook named these three Lagoon, T h r u m b - C a p , and Bow, all marked on the
chart. Cook kept his course, and named the next islands " T h e Groups" (Marokau and Ravahere), Bird Island (Reitoru), and Chain Island (Anaa), all marked as such on
the chart. After passing by Osnaburgh, Cook reached Tahiti.
 The Age of Enlightenment 119

Left Fig. 114. In 1767, Carteret

pierced through what had been
supposed to be a bay on New Britain's
eastern coast. T h e "bay" that had
earlier been named St. George now
became St. George's Channel, and the
land to the north was dubbed New
Ireland. Carteret then discovered
another strait at the northwest end
of the thin, diagonal island, naming
the island beyond it New Hanover.
O n this map of the southwestern tip
of New Ireland from the account of
Carteret's voyage in Hawkesworth
(1773), north runs diagonally to the
upper left, so that Cape St. George
on the far right is the southern tip of
the island, and the northeast coast of
New Britain would be below the map.
T h e profiles on the upper section
are of neighboring coasts; Isle of
Man, for example, is Watom Island.
Overleaf. Fig. 115. T h e south Pacific,
Antonio Zatta, 1776, recording
the voyages of Byron, Wallis, Carteret,
and Cook. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]

encounter in the Tuamotus, was the island of Pinaki, which he

named Whitsun, it being the eve of that holiday.
Continuing west, he found Nukutavake {Queen Charlotte),
Vairaatea (Egmont), Paraoa (Gloucester), Manuhangi (Cumberland),
and Nengonengo (Prince William Henry), marked on both charts.
Sailing four days from Nengonengo, on June 17 he found Mehetia,
the most easterly of the Society Islands, which he named Osna-
burgh. Wallis's greatest discovery came the following day, June 18,
1767—Tahiti, which he named King George III Island. The chart
from Hawkesworth designates the island as "Wallis's King George"
to differentiate it from Byron's island in the Tuamotus, while Zatta
denotes it Taiti, probably following Bougainville.
From Tahiti, Wallis continued westward past Moorea, then on
to Tapuaemanu (Sir Charles Saunders Island), Mopiha (LordHowes
Island), and Fenua (Scilly Islands). By mid-August, concerned about
his leaking ship, and judging that further reprovisioning would be
difficult, he sailed north for the Marianas. Two days later, an un-
known island was encountered which the officers named after their
commander, and is now known both by the name Wallis and Uvea.
Philip Carteret and the Swallow, meanwhile, had not perished
as Wallis feared. Carteret had managed to hold onto the vessel
through the storm, and boldly set out across the ocean despite the
ailing ship, the lack of forge and iron, and no articles of trade. Juan
Fernandez had been fortified by the Spanish, so Carteret instead
refreshed, despite rough seas, at Masafuero. Sailing west in search
of Davis Land and a southern continent in June, the middle of
winter, the lack of food forced Carteret to keep his sails dangerously
full. Yet, when a midshipman named Pitcairn sighted an unknown
island, the seas prevented them from landing (Fig. 116). Ironically,
while Carteret and crew were at their discovery of Pitcairn, Wallis
was at his great discovery of Tahiti—a fateful juxtaposition given
what would come to pass a couple of decades later when William
Bligh sailed to the island on the Bounty.
Mezzodi
122 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Above. Fig. 116. Pitcairn by Carteret, from Hawkesworth (1773). W h e n Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against William Bligh, this map was among the Bounty's onboard
references and inspired the mutineers' destiny. Not only was Pitcairn ideal for the purpose—temperate and inhabitable on the one hand, yet remote and difficult to
approach on the other—but once they found it and realized that Carteret's map placed the island more than 3° too far west, the imperfectness of the map in itself was an
attraction, since the error promised to delay its being visited by others. Belour. Fig. 117. View in Pitcairn, Frederick Beechey, 1831. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
 The Age of Enlightenment 123

The onset of scurvy and exhaustion forced Carteret to climb to a breakthrough in the mapping of the Pacific: the Swallow was
lower latitudes to catch the trade winds. In doing so, small islands coaxed into the "bay" Dampier had named St. George's, and by
in the southern Tuamotus were discovered and named for various following the clue, Carteret was finally able to sever into two what
English noblemen, usually condensed to Duke of Gloucester; had been known as New Britain. The island to the south kept the
these, the only point on Carteret's itinerary marked on the chart in name, the land to the north was christened New Ireland (Fig. 108),
Fig. 113, include Mururoa Atoll, site of the French government's and St. George's Bay become St. George's Channel. This discovery,
above- and below-ground nuclear tests two centuries later. in turn, brought him to islands he named the Admiralty, which
Continuing far west, Carteret came across a cluster of islands though not new discoveries were poorly known. The complex
he named Queen Charlotte's, not knowing that it was the Santa archipelagos tailing off to the northeast of New Guinea had lost
Cruz group of Quiros, and reached Vanikoro. Their situation was some of their secrets to Carteret.
too desperate for Carteret to search any further for a southern Rotting and open, the Swallow reached the shipyards in
continent, so he continued instead to the west, coasting Ndeni Batavia. Fear of the sickness for which this capital of the Dutch
(Nendo), which he dubbed Egmont. The crew's weakened state Indies was infamous, however, sent Carteret back to sea after she
made it impossible to obtain any of the provisions seen in plenty was only partially repaired, despite the season being wrong for sail-
on the coast. Passing Tinakula volcano, they next rediscovered the ing. His voyage, slighted by the roar of those that followed, added
long-sought Solomon Islands; but they did not realize that they worthy data to the Pacific map and helped solve the mystery of the
had, as the position of the Swallow was so far to the west of that Solomons. Vessel and crew would surely have perished under less
normally assigned Mendanas lost world. able hands. "His ship was very small, went very ill, and when we
Discovering the Kilinailau (Carteret) group and Buka Island took leave of him, he remained as if it were at anchor," Bougain-
along the way, Carteret stopped in New Britain to make ship ville, who hailed him en route home, wrote. "How much he must
repairs and take on food and water. Currents then led them to have suffered in so bad a vessel may well be conceived."
124 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 119. World map, Heinrich Scherer, 1700. Scherer, a Jesuit, was fond of making thematic maps from otherwise uninspired geography. O n this map indicating Jesuit
missions around the world, in Oceania there is only a hopeful ship; above it, the powers of heaven offer light to the "heathens" in the four corners of the globe.

Bougainville Follows the English Lead known. While turning south to avoid their hazards, he speculated
France also sent a vessel across the southern Pacific at this time, as to whether the Tuamotus could be evidence of a southern conti-
one whose path coincidentally intersected that of the English voy- nent: "It is difficult to conceive such a number of low islands, and
ages. A map published in the December 1773 issue of Gentleman's almost drowned lands, without supposing a continent near it. But
Magazine adds Louis Antoine de Bougainville's voyage while drop- geography is a science of facts; in studying it, authors must by no
ping the less significant voyage of Byron. Bougainville stumbled means give way to any system, formed in their studies, unless they
across Tahiti after Wallis, only the clear evidence of a recent Euro- would run the risk of being subject to very great errors, which can
pean visit quelling the inclination to believe he had made a new be rectified only at the expense of navigators."
discovery. In the western Pacific, Bougainville, right after Carteret, In Tahiti, Bougainville added to their crew a Tahitian man
found the Solomon Islands, similarly failing to realize that he had named Ahu-Toru. Two days after leaving sight of "Oumaitia" (an
done so. And finally, when Bougainville reached New Ireland, he island in the vicinity of Tahiti), Ahu-Toru "pointed at the bright
came across a European campsite and found a lead plate with star in Orion's shoulder, saying, we should direct our course upon
English words recording a recent visit—Carteret's. it," and that in two days' time they would reach another island with
Zatta (Fig. 115), though not marking Bougainville's tracks, all the offerings of Tahiti. But although Ahu-Toru was a sensation
records his "Gran Cycladi" (Great Cyclades) to the southwest of in France, he was not interesting to geographers as was Tupaia,
New Guinea, a name soon changed to New Hebrides by James a Tahitian Cook would later adopt. The English translator of
Cook on his second voyage, and now known as Vanuatu. Zatta Bougainville's account, indeed, bluntly offers the opinion that
also unknowingly mapped one of the lost Solomons by including Ahu-Toru was rather stupid.
the island Bougainville dubbed Choiseui Bougainville is the second European known to have skirted
Bougainville's Pacific adventures began after diplomatic duties Samoa, an archipelago Ahu-Toru knew nothing of; when the
in the Falkland Islands and a difficult passage through the Magellan islands were first sighted, the Tahitian first thought they must be
Strait. After a futile search for Davis's phantom continent, he made Bougainville's home country Islanders came cautiously close in
some discoveries in the complex Tuamotus, which he dubbed the canoes and some trade was carried out, but landing was not
"Dangerous Archipelago"—by which name they are still sometimes possible. "The longitude of these isles," Bougainville wrote, "is
 Th e Age of Enlightenment 125

nearly the same in which Abel Tasman was, by his reckoning, when
he discovered the isles of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Pylstaart, those
of Prince William, and the shoals of Fleemskerk. It is likewise the
same which, within a very little, is assigned to the Solomon's isles,"
this last statement having little meaning given the vast breadth of
longitude of the islands. Next came Vanuatu and a brush near the
Great Barrier Reef, Bougainville coming closer than his predeces-
sors to a direct encounter with the east coast of Australia. Turning
north to retake the known route above New Guinea, he passed
unknown coasts which he dubbed Choiseul and Bougainville,
among others, not realizing that they were the Solomons.
New Ireland brought them supplies of water and wood, but
also an eerie, surreal planet—endless insects, raging storms, and
repeated earthquakes. Nonetheless, in Port Praslin on July 13,
1768, a solar eclipse allowed the astronomer Pierre Antoine Veron
to fix the bay's longitude.
In late September 1768, after a difficult passage, Bougainville
reached Batavia. A map of the coastal neighborhood of this Dutch
capital in the East was among those prepared for the published
account of the voyage. This chart alone was not included in the
final product and survives only in the manuscript version (Fig.
120), recording Pulau Seribu, the "Thousand Islands" (actually
about 120) that dot the Java Sea off its coast.

Thomas Forrest in the Western Pacific

While the glamor of pure discovery was deservedly captured by
the English and French circumnavigators, the mapping of the
western Pacific continued by explorers following the traditional
Fig. 120. Bougainville reached Batavia on September 28, 1768, just twelve
Asian routes. Despite two and half centuries of trade with the days alter Carteret left the Dutch Indies capital. [Gowrie Galleries] Overleaf.
Indies, published maps of eastern Indonesian seas were mediocre. Fig. 121. Eastern Indonesia, from A Voyage to New Guinea, and the Moluccas,
Improving the map of the region was part of the goal of Thomas from Balambangan, Thomas Forrest, 1779. In 1774-6, Forrest sailed in a small
craft to western New Guinea, hoping to locate sources of spices which were not
Forrest when he was sent from Balambangan to acquire cinnamon, under the control of the Dutch.
cloves, nutmeg, pepper, and clove bark in 1774.
Wanting to remain invisible to the Dutch, Forrest left Balam-
bangan in a native vessel, the Tartar, which would not attract sus- Sulawesi eluded geographers, who were all but blind to the
picion and which was small enough to be easily rowed in shallow stunning, graceful upper arch of Sulawesi Utara, that marked by
water. To further ensure his invisibility, he took only two Europeans Forrest as "Under the Dutch." The simple finger-like peninsula of
with him, the rest of his crew being Filipinos, Moluccans, and Sulawesi Tengah is reduced to a pointed stub, and the western coast
Lascars (South or Southeast Asian sailors). Forrest sailed for Sulu, of Halmahera is fully four degrees too far west, thus aligning too far
brushing byTernate andTidore, and then Batjan and east to New to the west in relation to Mindanao, even though it itself is one
Guinea. Reaching Geelvink's Bay and Dory Harbor, he found and a half degrees too far to the west.
nutmeg trees and determined from the natives that the tree was While Europeans were busy collecting data about the Pacific
abundant. But the Dutch did not allow them to trade in it; only from their own observations and from indigenous sources, their
the Chinese did so, with permission from the Sultan of Tidore. own store of geographic knowledge and cartographic sensibilities
In May 1775, Forrest reached Mindanao, where he sought was being borrowed by many of the Asian-Pacific peoples with
refuge for several months to await the change of monsoon. Here whom they came in contact. Some, for example Bugis mariners of
he received news that the English settlement in Balambangan had Sulawesi, had practical use for Western maps and methods, using
been sacked by people from Sulu; the island on which he now these to complement their own navigating. In other cases, Euro-
stood, and Celebes (Sulawesi), were considered alternatives to pean maps were assimilated but transformed. The Thai map in
Balambangan for an East India Company stronghold. Fig. 101, part of a religious and cosmographical work made about
The map of the eastern Indonesian islands accompanying the the same time as Thomas Forrest's map in Fig. 121, is such an
account of his adventures of 1774-6 (Fig. 121) traces his route incorporation of Western geography, much of it probably gotten
and offers more detail than most published maps of the region, but a century earlier, adapted to Thai needs. Orientation and scale
demonstrates how sketchy it remained to European cartographers. became subservient to aesthetics and context. Even when Asian
Not only are longitudes approximate, but even the relative longi- kingdoms adopted Western mapping methods, they usually
tudes of principal islands are in error. The complex shape of coexisted with, not supplanted, their own.
Chapter 7
The Three Voyages of James Cook

The figure who most revolutionized the mapping of the Pacific respectable, in Cook's circumstances, for the first detailed map
was James Cook. Before Cook had ever set out on the voyages for of the islands. He refined the coordinates on his subsequent two
which he is best remembered, he had already established himself as voyages, resulting in the improved placement of the islands on the
a fine cartographer, particularly in North America in his mapping Cassini map of 1798 (Fig. 123).
of the St. Lawrence and of the Carolina coast. Now accompanied by a Tahitian navigator, Tupaia, they sailed
Cook made three Pacific voyages. The primary cartographic to the south and west in a pattern that allowed them to search both
contributions of the first were his mappings of New Zealand, east- for Terra Australis, if it existed, as well as New Zealand, which had
ern Australia, and the Society Islands; of the second, his greatest not been visited by Europeans since its discovery by Tasman one
voyage, definitively settling the question of Terra Australis, adding and a quarter centuries earlier. The exploration of the two was
New Caledonia to the map, and rediscovering the Marquesas. The linked, since it was widely held that New Zealand might be part
discovery of Hawaii and the exploration of the Northwest Coast of of the austral continent (Fig. 125). Tupaia added new intrigue to
America were the dominant accomplishments of the final voyage. their vigilance of celestial phenomenon: when a comet passed over-
The first voyage entered the Pacific by South America, the second head, he "instantly cried out, that as soon as it should be seen by
and third via Africa. The first two were circumnavigations, while the people of Bolabola [Bora Bora], they would kill the inhabitants
the last entered and returned by the African route. of Ulietea [Raiatea], who would with the utmost precipitation fly
to the mountains."
The First Voyage The expedition reached 40° 2 2 ' south latitude with no sign
Cook's Endeavour, a fine bark specially fortified to inhibit the of a southern continent, but bad weather prevented their sailing
damage of tropical worms, left Plymouth on August 26, 1768. far enough to entirely dismiss the hypothetical temperate coastline
For his timepiece, Cook still relied on the older pendulum clock
technology, as the more accurate, less finicky, and much smaller
Opposite: Fig. 122. James Cook's 1769 map of New Zealand was published in
chronometer had not yet been approved by the Admiralty. Among Hawkesworth's Voyages in 1773, and here re-engraved five years later in Venice
the scientific members of the crew was the talented young Joseph by Antonio Zatta. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd] Below. Fig. 123. T h e Society Islands
Banks, a botanist and Fellow of the Royal Society who also contrib- to the west of Tahiti, Cassini, 1798, after Cook. [Kauai Fine Arts]

uted to the expedition's financing, and Charles Green, an assistant

at the Greenwich Observatory. The expedition's initial, primary
mapping goal in the Pacific was not to chart the ocean or its islands,
but rather to help scientists map the cosmos. The island of Tahiti
was to help measure the distance between the earth and the sun by
serving as a Pacific observation point for a transit of Venus (see
page 109 above, and Chapter 8).
After sailing through the Le Maire Strait and rounding Cape
Horn, Cook fixed their course to the northwest, straight for Tahiti,
skimming Vahitahi in the Tuamotus en route. Three months were
passed in Tahiti and one month among neighboring islands. In
addition to a map of Tahiti itself, a map was made of the rest of
the Society group to the northwest: Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa, Bora
Bora, Tupai, and the group of small islets on the west, "Maurua."
Longitudes are generally 7-10 kilometers too far west—perfectly
130 Early Mapping of the Pacific

from charts just yet. Zig-zagging to the west, on October 6 a crew transit of Mercury calculated to occur on November 9 could be
member sighted land: they had reached the eastern shores of the observed to fix longitude. Here the Maoris were more trustful,
north island of New Zealand. Tupaia was able to communicate giving the English a guided tour of their village and trading, while
with the Maoris, but relations with the islanders were poor. The the strangers set up their astronomical equipment on shore for the
inlet where they had anchored was dubbed Poverty Bay "because observation of the transit. Continuing north along a deep gulf
it afforded us no one thing we wanted," an appellation befitting they dubbed "Thames," they reached the spectacular bay they
their experience, but not the bay itself. The boy who had first called Bay of Islands. These two areas, Cook reflected at the end of
sighted the land, Nicholas Young, received an extra gallon of rum his tour of New Zealand, were the most ideal for an English colony.
and immortality—the name "Young Nick's Head" still designates The accuracy of Cook's mapping of New Zealand now began
the bay's southwestern point. to falter at the hands of the elements. A strong gale shoved the
Cook's remarkable surveying of New Zealand began immedi- Endeavour out of sight of land for the first time in their scouting of
ately (Fig. 122). Sailing south, a large bay was named Hawkes for the coast. A month of poor weather made sailing nightmarish, and
the First Lord of the Admiralty, and its southern point Cape Kid- frustrated their surveying of the northernmost part of the island.
nappers after the Maoris' attempted abduction of aTahitian boy Cook nonetheless succeeded in ascertaining the coordinates of its
among the crew. A couple of days' sailing further south brought northwestern tip (Cape Maria van Diemen, named by Tasman)
no suitable harbor, so Cook reversed direction. There is no doubt within a couple of minutes of its true latitude and four minutes
that the prospect that they had finally discovered Terra Australis of its actual longitude.
was high in their minds: when master's mate Richard Pickersgill Some parts of the northwestern coast had to be left to guess-
drew some of maps of the new-found coast, he already bestowed work before the weather improved, charting continuing as they
them with titles beginning "A Part of the So Continent...." now made fast progress south. When the coast veered to the west
Throughout the New Zealand reconnaissance, mapping was and the snow-capped mountain of Taranaki rose inland, Cook
the overriding priority. In early November, toward the north of the called it Egmont—the name now designating the cape and national
Coromandel Peninsula, a fine little bay was reached from which a park. Leaving Taranaki behind them, they sailed across the mouth

Fig. 124. An unmounted globe gore by Coronelli, 1688. Parts of Tasmania, Fig. 125. An unmounted globe gore by Coronelli, 1688. Tasman's discoveries
Carpentaria, and New Guinea are shown, but the eastern coasts of Australia in western New Zealand are recorded by the well-defined coast in the lower left.
remained a mystery. The tracks marked are those of Le Maire, reflecting The tentative eastern coast of New Zealand is not based on any European know-
Schouten's decision to sail north to avoid the risk of getting stranded by west- ledge of those shores, but rather was a logical adaptation of a Terra Australis
blowing winds in a New Guinea-Terra Australia gulf. [Martayan Lan, NY] coastline into a hypothetical eastern New Zealand coastline. [Martayan Lan, NY]
 The Three Voyages of James Cook 131

of what appeared to be a large bay, for the moment unaware He was less confident about his mapping of the South Island,
that in its southeastern extreme lay a strait. "Tovy-poenammu." "The Season of the year and circumstance of
By this point the Endeavour was in need of maintenance. Ideal the Voyage would not permit me to spend so much time about
water in which to service her was had in an inlet they dubbed, this Island as I had done at the other and the blowing weather we
accordingly, Ship Cove, in a sound they called Queen Charlotte's. frequently met with made it both dangerous and difficult to keep
The charting of the various inlets and coasts was continued from upon the Coast." Indeed, he had missed the strait separating
boats while work proceeded on the main vessel. The longitude Stewart Island from the mainland, and thus rendered it a penin-
now ascertained by Cook and Green for Queen Charlotte would sula and, conversely, not realized that his Banks' Island is really
be challenged by his astronomers three years later, when Cook re- a peninsula (Banks Peninsula, near Christchurch).
turned on his second voyage in June 1773. Cook's basic mission had now been completed, so attention
The principal question in the minds of Cook, Banks, Green, turned to choosing a return path home. The route via Cape Horn
and common sailor alike, remained whether New Zealand was part would have allowed them another chance at the nagging question
of a southern continent. Though well aware that modest islands of Terra Australis, but it was the end of March and the onset of
had occasionally tricked even seasoned navigators into believing winter, a foolish time to venture into such high latitudes. Safer
that a continent had been discovered, New Zealand had already would be to sail west for the Cape of Good Hope. That route
proven to be more major a south Pacific land than any other known would make their voyage a circumnavigation, and also afford an
east of Australia. The mystery motivated Cook to set out in a row- opportunity to investigate another unknown—eastern Australia.
boat and climb a hill to survey the area from a height, from which, Together with his officers, Cook decided to continue west and
on January 22, 1770, he found his answer: open ocean was seen to around Africa, but rather than follow the known route above New
the east. The part of New Zealand that they had coasted thus far Guinea, they would do what previous navigators had prudently
was an island. But could the land to its south, on which they now avoided: they would sail straight for the still unknown eastern coast
stood, be the austral continent? of New Holland. Nothing beyond what Vincenzo Coronelli marks
Cook gleaned what he could from an old man on a small island on this globe gore was known (Fig. 124); Tasmania sits by itself on
named Motuara. The land to the east of the strait (North Island) the south, and the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula hangs
was called "Aeheinomouwe," the man informed him, and many coyly below New Guinea. Everything between southeastern New
moons were required to sail around it. Circumnavigating the other Guinea and northeastern Tasmania was a mystery.
island, called "Tovy-poenammu," was also lengthy—by which he They opted to begin at the Tasmanian coast, about where
was of course also telling Cook that it was not a continent. Tasman had left off. Tasmania lies not just south of southeastern
In early March, the Endeavour was ready to return to sea. The Australia, but also west; Tasman, however, had erred about three
strait named for Cook was crossed, and the North Island coasted degrees to the east in his placement of Tasmania, and thus upon
long enough to convince all onboard that it was an island. They reaching the area, Cook, even allowing for a SW-NE contour to
then set about mapping the South Island, which proved even more the coast, was surprised to see no trace of it to the south. He left
formidable a task, principally due to the foul weather which repeat- behind for the moment the question of Tasmania's relationship to
edly blew them away from the coast and caused havoc with their Australia—a mystery which eluded him to the end—and began
sails. By the end of March, they had sailed around the South Island, the maiden charting of the eastern coast of Australia.
dealing yet another blow to the quest for an austral continent.
Tovy-poenammu was indeed insular, as the old man on Motuara
Fig. 126. Cook's map of Botany Bay, New South Wales. From Hawkesworth's
had described to them.
Voyages, London, 1773. [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints]
Although the weather had prevented their surveys of the south-
ern island from achieving quite the same precision as with its mate
to the north, the resulting chart was an extraordinary accomplish-
ment. Unlike other shores, knowledge of which had evolved in bits
and pieces over many years and numerous voyages, Cook had in
less than half a year transformed the map of New Zealand from
the western coast cursorily mapped by Tasman, to a detailed chart
of its entire coastline of both major islands.
"I shall point out such places as are drawn with sufficient accu-
racy to be depended upon, and such as are not," Cook advises in
his journal of the chart's strengths and weaknesses. The coast be-
tween Cape Pallisser and East Cape "I believe to be laid down
pretty accurate both in its figure and the Course." As for the region
from East Cape to Cape Maria van Diemen, "altho it cannot be
perfectly true yet it is without any very material error;" but from
Cape Maria van Diemen "up as high as the Latitude of 36° 15' we
seldom were nearer the Shore than from 5 to 8 Laegues and there-
fore the Line of the Sea Coast may in some places be erroneous."
132 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Sailing northward, in late April 1770, a comfortable bay was Two drastic measures were taken to enable the ship to limp to
discovered for the expedition to resupply and examine the country. shore: whatever could be spared was tossed overboard, and then
Here the vast cultural "distance" between Australia and Polynesia a tricky operation was performed in which a sail with wool and
became evident. The Australians spoke a language altogether un- oakum was layered with dirt and dragged under the ship, so that
related to that of Tupaia. Aside from minor protestations to the the mixture would be drawn into the damaged hull and plug its
landing, the Australians reacted with seeming disinterest to the leaks. The expertise of the crew, Cook's level-headedness, and the
strange visitors, and perhaps most alien of all, demonstrated no lucky happenstance that a piece of coral had broken off and effect-
interest in acquiring iron, which had proven universally coveted ively plugged the hole it had caused, saved the expedition. Boats
among Polynesians. They named the place Stingray Harbour after were sent to locate a suitable landing place on the Australian main-
the bountifulness of that animal in its waters, but then changed the land, and the vessel was repaired as best possible. Yet their mapping
name to Botany Bay (Fig. 126) after the rich cache of exotic plant endeavors did not slacken from the emergency; the landings longi-
specimens collected by Banks. Another bay just north of it they tude was measured by astronomical means while there.
named Port Jackson, and toward the end of May they reached a Avoiding further calamity henceforth did, however, inhibit the
large, open inlet, near what is now Brisbane, which they named accuracy of their mapping of Australia. Freeing themselves from
Bustard Bay after the birds they saw there. the clutches of the Great Barrier Reef allowed them to head for the
It was from this point that their woes began. The Endeavour relative safety of the East Indies, but kept them too far from the
was in need of maintenance, and her passengers in need of fresh coast to continue charting it properly. With the Endeavour in a
water. Shoals, reefs, and islands began to punctuate the sea, the more precarious state than even they knew, they limped through
country became less fruitful, and a two-day reprieve in what they the Torres Strait and settled the question of New Guineas insu-
dubbed Thirsty Bay failed to yield water. The good news—or so larity, then continued westward below the chain of Indonesian
they thought at the time—was that the moon was so brilliant that islands, and north through the Sunda Strait to Batavia.
it let them risk sailing through the night, a practice which a While in Batavia awaiting completion of the repairs to the
cautious navigator like Cook would normally have avoided in Endeavour, Cook entrusted copies of three charts composed during
unfamiliar waters. But unknown to them, they were slipping inside the voyage to officials of a Dutch fleet bound for home, which
the Great Barrier Reef, and by sailing northward into it they were they agreed to get to the Royal Society: that of the "South Sea,"
being drawn into a great natural trap, a funneling lair. of New Zealand, and of New South Wales. Thus the expedition's
As the sun set on June 10, 1770, what appeared to be rocks most significant cartographic contributions reached home before
or shoals were sighted, so Cook opted to hold his position until the explorers themselves.
morning. This would also allow him to look for Quiros's shores, Cook reached England in July 1771, bringing his country a
"which some geographers for what reason I know not have thought wealth of new geographic and ethnographic data, and the glory of
proper to tack to this land." Although water depths were wildly an impressively successful circumnavigation. Maps prepared during
inconsistent, the sea was smooth, and they did not seem to be in the voyage appeared in engraved form in Hawkesworth's Voyages.
immediate danger. But shortly after everyone except the watch had But the first printed map of the voyage was never published, having
retired, in high water, the Endeavour struck a razor-sharp coral reef. been privately produced by Banks in 1772 (Fig. 127). The map
depicts the east coast of Australia for the first time, and records
the name New South Wales.

The Second Voyage

Cook's first voyage had eroded the credibility of a great southern
continent, but not categorically disproved it. The settling of the
question became the primary objective of a new expedition for
which Cook was given two ships, the Resolution, which he com-
manded, and the Adventure, under Tobias Furneaux, who had
sailed with Wallis. They now carried chronometers, one on the
model of John Harrison, the eccentric genius who developed
them, and three on other models. The new devices had the atten-
tion of the mapmaking and scientific community, as they held
the promise of determining the longitude of Pacific landfalls with
unprecedented accuracy. All four were calibrated at Plymouth
just prior to their departure on July 13, 1772.
Approaching the Pacific via Africa, the opposite end as the first
voyage, the fleet stopped at the Cape of Good Hope to refresh
and recalibrate the chronometers. While there it was learned that
France's Admiral Kerguelen had discovered land in 48° S latitude,
Fig. 127. Produced privately by Joseph Banks in 1772, this first printed map to roughly in line with the longitude of Mauritius—the insinuation
show Cook's first voyage was never published. [Robert and Mary Anne Parks] being that it might be part of the southern continent.
 The Three Voyages of James Cook 133

Fig. 128. A detail of Buache's map of the southern hemisphere. Though dated 1754, it is emended to include voyages through 1756.

Upon leaving the Cape, however, Cook's first goal was to similarly failed to settle the principal question. After refreshing in
investigate another purported tip of the austral continent, that Adventure Bay, he followed the eastern Tasmanian coast north until
sighted by Bouvet, Cape Circumcision. Gales made Bouvet's the land veered westward into what his officers correctly suspected
coordinates impossible to approach, but by passing 95 leagues to be a strait, but which Furneaux himself believed to be a bay.
further south, Cook showed that it was not part of a southern Further reconnaissance being inhibited by the winds, sails were set
continent. The shores sighted by Kerguelen were the next project; for Queen Charlotte's Sound in New Zealand.
but the longitude assigned by Kerguelen was wildly inaccurate, Cook and the Resolutions crew passed some peaceful weeks in
so Cook found no trace of his glaciated, fjord-indented island. Dusky Sound, maintaining cordial relations with the Mamoe
Astronomical observations were only rarely possible due to the people, who had been driven south by the militarily superior
overcast skies. Livestock died from the cold, the crew were showing Maoris. William Wales, the expedition's principal astronomer,
signs of scurvy, and the ships were in constant danger of the ice. had a bluff cleared to set up an observatory to check longitude,
But for their perseverance they became the first humans to cross and Richard Pickersgill made a map of the bay.
the Antarctic Circle, and their sweep of the high latitudes was From Dusky Sound, Cook sailed north to the Cook Strait,
sufficiently wide to expunge the ghost of Terra Australis from the where he found the Adventure in Queen Charlotte's Sound. Cook
Indian Ocean and westernmost Pacific. Later, Cook would revisit had intended to return to Tasmania, but as the winds continued
the icy seas and drive the final nails into the austral continent's to be unkind to the venture, he trusted Furneaux's instinct that it
coffin; but for the moment, having penetrated to 67° 15' S, they was part of New Holland.
had pushed their expertise, endurance, and luck to their limits. While in Queen Charlotte's Sound, Cook was informed by
The two vessels had become separated in the thick fog and difficult his astronomers of what they believed to be a significant error in
seas, so both turned independently toward warmer climes for an the longitude assigned the spot on the chart of New Zealand made
ultimate rendezvous in New Zealand. on the first voyage—disconcerting news, since it probably meant
En route, both Cook and Furneaux tried to solve the riddle of that the entire landmass was wrongly placed. The astronomer
Tasmania's relationship to Australia. Adverse winds foiled Cook's William Bayly calculated their longitude to be 173° 4 8 ' 551/2',
attempt to reach Tasmania whatsoever; he took the Resolution to fully 1° 20' west of the figure reached by Cook and Green three
Dusky Sound on the southwest extreme of New Zealand's South years earlier. Wales used the chronometers to extrapolate from
Island, having sailed 3660 leagues in 117 days without any glimpse his reading for Dusky Bay and reached a figure similar to Bayly's.
of land. Furneaux reached Tasmania, and added to existing charts Subsequent readings showed these figures to be flawed as well, but
the small islands off its northeast coast now named for him, but in the end Cook acknowledged that "it appears that the whole of
134 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Island, part of the group now named for Cook. A week later, an
island was sighted which was correctly identified as the Middelburg
('Eua) of Tasman, and the following day, sailing just south of it,
Tasman's Amsterdam (Tongatapu).
The Tonga Islands were discovered relatively early. The north-
ernmost extreme of the Tongas had been seen by Le Maire in 1616.
Tasman had enjoyed his visit to the southern isles in 1643, and
Wallis skirted the archipelago on the north in 1767. Cook now
began the formal mapping of the archipelago. The map he pro-
duced (Fig. 129) was rougher than his other efforts, even Tonga-
tapu and 'Eua being depicted rudimentarily. But Tonga was more
of a challenge than Tahiti and less of a priority than New Zealand.
'Eua was the first of the group Cook visited. The people were
gracious and hospitable, the island serene, its fruit freely offered;
Fig. 129. The southern Tonga Islands as mapped by James Cook on his second
voyage, published in 1777. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
but trade in the island's hogs and poultry could not be established,
so Cook crossed to Tongatapu, where the Resolution was generously
restocked. The English visitors were awed by the uniform garden-
Tavaipoenammoo" by which he referred to the South Island, "is laid like image of Tongatapu, as they had been impressed by the wilder
down 4 0 ' too far East," half of the error originally calculated, but aspect of'Eua, its lower garden contrasting the "beautiful disorder"
still an error of about 55 kilometers at the latitude of Cook Strait. of the interior. Here the mapping of the Pacific nearly took a loss to
Next they embarked upon the first of two southern sweeps islanders' thieving when a Tongan man burst from the Resolutions
through the central and eastern Pacific in search of the austral master's cabin with an armful of navigational books.
continent. Just as the Resolution cleared the Cook Strait, one of her Now early October 1773, Cook set out for New Zealand, pass-
chronometers gave out, though the one built on Harrison's design ing Tasman's Pylstaart (Ata) en route. The fleet was separated in a
continued to be reliable. They gently zig-zagged east through 133° dreadful storm off New Zealand, the two vessels then unable to
W longitude, but not having found any continent Cook turned find each other, so Cook left a message in a bottle buried beneath a
north, skirted the Tuamotus, and reached Tahiti. marked tree and left the comfort and safety of Oceania for another
Since many of the crew were sick and in urgent need of fresh tortuous hunt for the ghost of a Pacific Terra Australis. The Endea-
food and rest, Cook first anchored in closer Vaitepiha Bay rather vour sailed generally southeast, crossing the Antarctic Circle,
than Matavai Bay. He found the island beset by internal warring— returned north briefly, then made one final, dramatic plunge to
his own presence figured into the indigenous politics, as did the the south to 71° 10' S, where a solid wall of pack ice made further
effects of intervening European voyages, notably one out of Peru. advancement impossible. They could now confidently report that
Spain was alarmed at the discovery of a fruitful island in what it the austral continent that had been the single greatest impetus for
still considered its private ocean, and indeed the plethora of unde- Pacific exploration for two and a half centuries did not exist.
termined south Pacific Spanish landfalls on charts has been used Cook's descent to beyond 71° would be a challenge even for
to "prove" earlier Spanish discovery of Tahiti. a modern vessel. For him to have navigated through those seas,
Supplies in Vaitepiha being disappointing, Matavai became deadly ice all about, fickle and violent winds, compounded by sails
their destination after a week, and after that the neighboring islands and ropes which were so impregnated with ice as to be like rock,
of Huahine and Raiatea. Cook noted an error on his earlier chart's was altogether extraordinary. And although Cook did not discover
delineation of Raiatea and corrected it. Antarctica, he was frequently well south of much of that continent's
In order to "avoid the tracks of former Navigators" and to shore—he was just never far enough south at the right longitude.
investigate islands discovered by Tasman over a century earlier, Returning north, Cook debunked another Pacific land cham-
Cook sailed west for Tonga. Ironically, a principal impetus in pioned by Dalrymple, supposedly discovered by Juan Fernandez,
Cook's actions was a book written by the man who, had history and then made for Easter Island. The coordinates of Easter Island
played itself out at a different moment, would have led these had not yet been laid down accurately, but when the crew beheld
expeditions rather than Cook, and the man whose dreams of an the island's unique statues glaring at them, there was no question
attractive southern continent Cook was presently debunking— that they had reached the land described by Roggeveen. Their visit
Alexander Dalrymple. Dalrymple's Historical Collection of Voyages was agreeable and the island's position was plotted. Provisions,
provided Cook a record of the voyages of Quiros and Tasman, however, were scarce.
among others, along with Dalrymple's own opinions as to the But Cook carried with him a chart by Dalrymple (Fig. 130)
locations and identities of various discoveries. showing four islands purportedly lying to the northwest of Easter
Sailing generally west, after a week he sighted Maupiti, the Island which might supply all they needed. These were the south-
westernmost of the Society group. On September 23, an island ern Marquesas—Fatu Hiva, Motane, Hiva Oa, and Tahuata—
was discovered in about the spot where Dalrymple's volume placed which had lay undisturbed by European guests since their discovery
an island Quiros had named La Dezena, but Cook, probably by Mendafia in 1595. Ascertaining their coordinates accurately
correctly, doubted Dalrymple's interpretation. This was Hervey might, Cook rightly believed, help locate other enigmatic early
 The Three Voyages of James Cook 135

Spanish discoveries further west. The Marquesas, though having In six weeks of weaving his way through the island complex,
so rarely adorned published maps, had been gaining credibility: Cook produced one of the most remarkable surveys of his career,
de Fer in 1713 (Fig. 13), Nolin in 1740 (Fig. 68), and Buache in charting the group from Tanna and little Anatom on the south,
1754 (back endpaper), similar to Dalrymple's mapping. through Espiritu Santo on the north. Here Cook also delineated
Since Cook could trust that the latitude recorded by Mendana part of Oceania's ethnographic "map," noting that he seemed to be
for the Marquesas would be close to actual, but knew that any esti- in a crossroads of cultures—Vanuatu is a frontier between Polynesia
mate of leagues from Peru was far too rough to gauge longitude, he and Melanesia. The islanders at his first attempts at landfalls, in
sailed to the latitude Mendana assigned, 9° 30' S, but east of any Melanesian Malekula and Erromanga, were not welcoming; friend-
reasonable estimate of their longitude, and then turned due west. ly relations were, however, established on the Polynesian island of
On March 29, 1774, "being in latitude 10° 20', longitude 123° Tanna, despite unwarranted violence on the part of Cook's crew.
58' W.," Cook altered his course to reach "latitude 9° 24', which I Wales took many sets of observations to fix each point; in
judged to be the parallel of the Marquesas; where, as I have before southeast Malekula, the mean of 32 sets, in Tanna, 45 sets. In
observed, I intended to touch, in order to settle their situation, Tanna, Wales's frustration caused by the standards to which he
which I find different in different charts." On April 6, a sixteen- held himself became evident: "I begin to despair," he wrote of his
year-old midshipman named Hood sighted an island (Fatu Huku),
and then to the south the four isles recorded by Mendana were
Above: Fig. 130. The Marquesas as reconstructed by Alexander Dalrymple before
found. Cook wrote that Dalrymple's map proved to be "deficient in
Cook's rediscovery of the archipelago on his second voyage. From Voyages in the
nothing but situation," it having placed the four known Marquesas South Pacific Ocean, 1770. Belour. Fig. 131. The Marquesas, from the narrative
at 145° W longitude, about six degrees too far west. The latitude of the second voyage of James Cook, 1777. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
Dalrymple had ascertained from his sources was near perfect.
Cook's survey (Fig. 131) preserves Mendana's names for the
original four Marquesas and bestows upon the new one the name
of its teenage discoverer. Cook specifically sought, and mapped,
the port where Mendana had stopped, Madre de Dois (Vaitahu,
along western Tahuata), even locating a little waterfall mentioned
by Quiros. Here he did change the original European name, dub-
bing the bay after his ship, the Resolution. If his delineation of the
islands was still imperfect, his determination of Vaitahu's coordi-
nates was excellent—about 4 kilometers too far west. The promi-
nence of the Marquesas included by Zatta on his map of 1776
(Fig. 115) was probably inspired by news of Cook's rediscovery
of the islands, without yet drawing from his map.
Fresh meat was not to be had, but fruits, vegetables, and water
were obtained. The people were accommodating and beautiful—
the most physically beautiful people they had ever seen, eclipsing
even those of Tahiti. "The inhabitants of these islands," the
account relates, "collectively, are without exception the finest race
of people in this sea. For fine shape and regular features, they
perhaps surpass all other nations."
From the Marquesas the expedition returned to Tahiti once
again, trying to make a landing at the Tuamotus en route but de-
terred, as had other Europeans before them, by unreceptive island-
ers. Huahine and Raiatea were visited again, and then sails were set
to continue west for Tonga. As on their first trek from the Societies
for Tonga, one of the Cook Islands was discovered, this time Palm-
erston. Next Niue was discovered, named by Cook "Savage Island"
on account of the cloud of spears and stones greeting them when
they attempted to land.
But Cook's true purpose on this leg of his route lay beyond
Tonga, in a part of the ocean where Quiros had found his "Austra-
lia del Espiritu Santo" and Bougainville his "Great Cyclades."This
was Vanuatu, or as Cook called the islands, the New Hebrides.
Quiros had approached the group from the north (1605), and
Bougainville sailed through from east to west (1768). Cook reached
the archipelago in July 1774, close to Bougainville's tracks, though
approaching from south of Fiji.
136 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 132. James Cook's chart of New Caledonia and Vanuatu (New Hebrides), 1777. West is at the top. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]

attempts to take altitudes accurately enough to check the chrono- knew that the island was narrow, and although he never reached its
meter, "of doing any thing to the Purpose here, and yet I am such western coast, he was able to make a reasonable guess in delineating
a slave to it that I have scarce time to eat." His perfectionism was it on his map. A party sent out on boat believed, correctly, that the
not wasted: despite its flaws, the chart Cook composed from his northern end of the island was near, so Cook tried to circum-
readings was still being used for some of the islands in the late nine- navigate counter-clockwise. However, the extensive reefs and un-
teenth century. Cook believed he was applying to the individual predictable winds made him turn around and sail south, mapping
islands their indigenous names. Many, however, such as "Tanna," the coast through the Isle of Pines.
simply referred to the land upon which people stood— they had The only remaining task for Cook was to search for the south-
no name for their island per se. ern continent in the Atlantic, which he did en route back to
Sailing south and slightly west from Vanuatu toward New Zea- England after rounding Cape Horn. This second voyage of Cook
land, on September 4 a vast, unknown coast appeared, guarded by ranks among the greatest exploratory voyages of all time. In its
coral which seemed to surround the entire island yet stayed close scope, distance traveled, and risks taken, the odyssey dwarfed
to the surface of the water. They were at the northeast of New Cale- those of the already formidable first voyage.
donia. An eclipse was expected on September 7, so a channel in the
reef was found to reach an anchorage on an offshore islet. The New The Third Voyage
Caledonians were unarmed, shy, and very courteous. An observa- Whereas the high southerly latitudes were the focus of the second
tory was set up on the islet, though clouds hindered Wales's view voyage, the northern Pacific latitudes were the principal object of
of the beginning of the eclipse. the third. The discovery of Hawaii, for which that voyage is per-
Cook took a party onto the main island and up to the summit haps best known, was a happy accident en route from the Society
of a mountain, where he saw the ocean on the other side. Hence he Islands to the Northwest Coast of America. And whereas on the
 The Three Voyages of James Cook 137

Fig. 133. An engraved rendering of John Webber's drawing of a dance by women on the Tongan island of Lifuka, from Cook's third voyage, 1784. About a quarter hour
into a concert by eighteen men, "twenty women entered the circle. Most of them had, upon their heads, garlands of the crimson flowers of the China rose, or others; and
many of them had ornamented their persons with leaves of trees, cut with a great deal of nicety about the edges. They made a circle round the chorus, turning their faces
toward it, and began by singing a soft air, to which responses were made by the chorus in the same tone; and these were repeated alternately. All this while, the women
accompanied their song with several very graceful motions of their hands toward their faces, and in other directions at the same time, making constantly a step forward,
and then back again, with one foot, while the other was fixed. They then turned their faces to the assembly, sung some time, and retreated slowly in a body, to that part of
the circle which was opposite the hut where the principal spectators sat. After this, one of them advanced from each side, meeting and passing each other in the front, and
continuing their progress round, till they came to the left. O n which, two advanced from each side, two of whom also passed each other, and returned as the former; but
the other two remained, and to these came one, from each side, by intervals, till the whole number had again formed a circle about the chorus. Their manner of dancing
was now changed to a quicker measure, in which they made a kind of half turn by leaping, and clapped their hands, and snapped their fingers, repeating some words in
conjunction with the chorus. Toward the end, as the quickness of the music increased, their gestures and attitudes were varied with wonderful vigour and dexterity."
Cook then confided that "some of their motions, perhaps, would, with us, be reckoned rather indecent," though he speculated that they were merely "to display the
astonishing variety of their movements." If the information gathered by William Mariner in Tonga over three decades later is accurate, the display was a ruse by a chief,
Finau, to distract and slay the English. No attack ever came, supposedly because of internal rivalries.

second voyage, it was hoped that a continent would be discovered coast, and to make such notations thereon, as may be useful either
in the far south, on the third it was hoped that open sea would be to navigation or commerce." The mapping was not to be limited
discovered in the far north. to the geographic outlines of islands, but rather should include "the
Europeans had since the late fifteenth century attempted to sail variation of the needle; bearings of head-lands; height, direction,
to the Orient via northern seas, and the effort had received new and course of the tides and currents; depths and soundings of the
energy during the eighteenth century. The Admiralty arranged for sea; shoals, rocks, &c."
Cook to attempt to round North America from the Pacific as an- Cook left on July 12, 1776 in the Resolution. The expedition
other expedition did so from the Atlantic—the hope being that the was a fleet of two, but the other vessel, the Discovery, was delayed
two would meet each other along a viable northern passage, such until August 1 because her captain, John Clerke, was in debtors'
as mapmakers had theorized for two and a half centuries. prison for having guaranteed a bad loan of his brother's. After the
Aside from that remarkable task, his instructions were routine. two vessels were united at Cape Town, they made such excellent
"At whatever place you may touch in the course of your voyage," time into the Pacific that Cook found himself with a year of free
they read, "where accurate observations of the nature hereafter time for general exploration before the attempted rendezvous above
mentioned have not already been made, you are, as far as your time America—time, it would seem, for him to pursue the voracious
will allow, very carefully to observe the true situation of such places, exploration for which he had become justly famous.
both in latitude and longitude." He was to "survey, make charts, When, on January 26, 1777, Cook reached Tasmania, the
and take views of such bays, harbours, and different parts of the island was still presumed to be part of Australia. Cook's attempts
138 Early Mapping of the Pacific

vacation, and the mapping endeavors of the expedition again

begin to disappoint the superhuman expectations set by Cook's
previous voyages. Despite repeated reports of other major groups in
the vicinity, notably Fiji to the northwest and Samoa to the north-
northeast, no effort was made to "discover" and survey them. Why
did Cook, the tireless, obsessive explorer and mapmaker, suddenly
vacation for three and a half months in Tonga without attempting
to investigate the archipelagos of which he was being informed?
His own text seems strangely detached from the question: "Under
the denomination of Friendly Islands, we must include, not only
the group at Hapaee, which I visited, but also ... others that have
never been seen, hitherto, by any European navigators.... According
to the information that we received there, this Archipelago is very
extensive. Above one hundred and fifty islands were reckoned up to
us by the natives, who made use of bits of leaves to ascertain their
number; and Mr. Anderson, with his usual diligence, even procured
all their names. Fifteen of them are said to be high, or hilly, such
as Toofoa, and Eooa; and thirty-five of them large. Of these, only
three were seen this voyage.... Sixty-one of these islands have their
proper places and names marked upon our chart of the Friendly
Islands, and upon the sketch of the harbour of Tongataboo, to both
which I refer the reader. But it must be left to future navigators,
to introduce into the geography of this part of the South Pacific
Ocean, the exact situation and size of near a hundred more islands
in this neighbourhood, which we had not an opportunity to ex-
plore; and whose existence we only learnt from the testimony of
our friends, as above-mentioned."
Cook then goes on to actually name Samoa {Hamoa), Fiji
Fig. 134. The southern Tonga islands, based on the maps from Cook's second
and third voyages, by Cassini, 1798. [Kauai Fine Arts] (Feejee), and the northern Tonga island of Vava'u: "But the most
considerable islands in this neighbourhood, that we now heard of
(and we heard a great deal about them), are Hamoa, Vavaoo, and
to settle the issue during his previous two voyages had been Feejee. Each of these was represented to us as larger than Tonga-
thwarted by uncooperative winds, but now he simply mentions the taboo. No European, that we know of, has, as yet, seen any one
apparent similarities of language between the Tasmanian people of them." This was, of course, not true.
and those of northern Australia, without any evident lust to settle He should have visited Vava'u, he explains, but had first been
the geographic question empirically Here it can fairly be said for misled to believe that it was small and without a good harbor, until
the first time that Cook did not well serve the advancement of the King Paulaho corrected him (and even offered to accompany him
mapping of the Pacific. The erroneous linking of Tasmania and there). Cook's own comments on Samoa also beg an explanation
Australia remained on charts until 1798, when George Bass and for his failure to visit them: "Hamoa [Samoa], which is also under
Matthew Flinders sailed through the strait separating them, and the dominion of Tongataboo, lies two days sail North West from
a chart of their voyage was published by Dalrymple. Vavaoo [Vava'u]. It was described to me, as the largest of all their
From Tasmania, the expedition sailed to New Zealand, where islands; as affording harbours and good water; and as producing,
more astronomical observations were made in Queen Charlotte's in abundance, every article of refreshment found at the places we
Sound. Tahiti was the intended next landing, but the winds made visited. Poulaho [King of Tonga], himself, frequently resides there.
that an impossible target. Cook altered their course, bringing them It would seem, that the people of this island are in high estimation
to Mangaia, southernmost member of the Cook group. Though at Tongataboo; for we were told, that some of the songs and dances,
in need of reprovisioning, the lack of any safe anchorage forced with which we were entertained, had been copied from theirs; and
them to leave "this fine island, which seemed capable of supplying we saw some houses, said to be built after their fashion" (Fig. 110).
all our wants." Sights were set for bountiful Tonga, to which the At the same time that Cook's cartographic zeal seemed to wane,
present winds seemed happy to lead them. Frequent reprovisioning so did his lauded patience and reserve in dealing with the islanders.
was essential because the Resolution was filled with sundry animals; Punishment to "thieves" was quick and untempered, to the point
Cook once joked that the Discovery was a veritable Noah's Ark save that many remembered him with hatred when Bruni d'Entrecast-
for the want of female humans. eaux visited Tonga sixteen years afterwards.
After reaching Tonga in mid-April, however, there was no Cook did, nonetheless, keep refining his surveys of those
want for the fair sex of our species aboard their arks. Through mid- Tongan shores they did visit. "The difference in longitude, between
July, the company enjoyed what might be described as a working Annamooka and Tongataboo," Cook explained, "is somewhat less
 The Three Voyages of James Cook 139

Fig. 135. Death of Cook, 1781. An early depiction of Hawaii and Cook's death, from a German newspaper article reporting word of the event. Borne of the reporter's
imagination, pagodas mark the walled "Hawaiian" village, and the Hawaiian chief in the lower right wears an Amerindian headdress. One wonders what the artist has
placed in his hands—tapa, or one of Cook's maps. Although the article refers Cook's death as "last year," which would date the view at 1780, it then erroneously refers to
"1780" as the year of Cook's death (actually 1779), placing the view at 1781.

than was marked in the chart and narrative of my last [second] but from which to forge "hatchets, and other iron tools" to use as
voyage." He then lays out the latitude of their observatory, located articles of trade. On December 8, feeling what one crew described
near the middle of the north side of Tongatapu, based on several as "the greatest regret," they sailed north to begin their search for
observations, as being 21° 8' 19" S.—highly accurate. Longitude a Northwest Passage, stumbling across Hawaii along the way.
was determined to be 184° 55' 18" E, a figure derived from "one After the return of the expedition in October 1780, nearly four
hundred and thirty-one sets of lunar observations, amounting to years elapsed before the publication of the official narrative with its
above a thousand observed distances, between the moon, sun, and many charts and illustrations. News of the voyage spread quickly,
stars." The figure was slightly too far east. however, and images conjured largely from imagination depicted
An attempt to check longitude by a solar eclipse on July 5 was the death of its celebrated commander in Hawaii (Fig. 135).
marred by clouds, but "the disappointment was of little conse- Intrigue and rivalry accompanied the publication of the official
quence, since the longitude was more than sufficiently determined, charts. The account of the voyage credits the lieutenant Henry
independently of this eclipse, by lunar observations" from Anna- Roberts with having prepared them, under Captain Cook's super-
moka's observatory on the island's west side. "The difference in vision, but William Bligh, in notes amended to the narrative, insists
longitude," Cook continues, "made by the time-keeper," John that only he and Cook were responsible for them. According to
Harrison's famous chronometer, "between the two observatories Banks, Lord Sandwich, after whom Hawaii had been named, asked
is 0° 16' 0"." He was perplexed by a marked decrease in magnetic that Alexander Dalrymple supervise the engraving of the charts and
variation at and near Annamooka than in its neighboring islands. coastal profiles—all except the world [Roberts'] map, which was
Cook sailed from Tonga in mid-July and reached Tahiti in mid- produced "under the sole direction of the Admiralty" and "cost a
August, skimming the Austral island of Tubuai en route. Upon large Sum of money." The remaining charts, under Dalrymple's
reaching Tahiti, Cook apprised himself of the island's latest political care, "were elegantly engraved at Reasonable prices."
intrigue and on the increasing activity of the Spanish from Lima. The labors of two and a half centuries of mariners, combined
Point Venus again became the site of astronomical observations. He with improved technology and theory, seemed finally to bud in the
continued on to Moorea, Huahine, Uliatea, and finally Bora Bora, years leading up to Cook's voyages, the fruit ripe for his picking.
an island he had never yet set foot on. Yet that fruit needed an extraordinary human being to harvest it.
Seas and winds still kept Cook from anchoring on Bora Bora, Had such a singularly remarkable man not been there for the task,
but he made a hurried visit by boat and acquired part of the anchor his talents recognized by his superiors, the eleven years spanning
lost in Tahiti by Bougainville—which he wanted not as an anchor, 1768-79 would not have been the watershed they were.
Chapter 8
The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii

"It appeared to be a great high mountain covered with clouds Toys for their Hogs, fowls and fruit. By Eight o'clock there was
at the top," wrote George Robertson, sailing master of Captain upwards of five hundred canoes, round the ship, and at a Moderate
Samuel Wallis's Dolphin on June 19, 1767, at their first, distant Computation there was near four thousand men." Most of the
image of Tahiti. At six the next morning, "we saw the tops of several trading canoes had among her passengers "a fair young Girl... who
mountains ... this made us all rejoice and filled us with the greatest played a great many droll wanton tricks, which drew all our people
hopes Imaginable; we now looked upon ourselves as relieved from upon the Gunwales to see them. When they seemed to be most
all our distresses, as we were almost Certain of finding all sorts of merry and friendly some of our people observed great numbers of
refreshment on this great Body of Land." Thus was the recorded stones in every canoe. This created a little suspicion in several of
European discovery of Tahiti. our people, but the most of us could not think they had any Bad
What did they think they had found? "We now supposed we Intention against us. Especially as the whole traded very fair and
saw the long-wished-for Southern Continent, which has been often honest, and all the men seemed as hearty and merry as the Girls."
talked of, but never before seen by any Europeans," Robertson Yet the English were leery of a quick landing. "Indeed I must
wrote. But the illusion had half-vanished by the next day: "We was own we had some reason to be a little afraid, for by the time we
not fully persuaded," Robertson noted after sailing further along got close to the shore there was above two hundred great and small
its shores, "that this was part of the southern continent." canoes round us, and near fifteen hundred men. As to the numbers
When the sun rose and fog lifted, her crew beheld "upward of that was on the shore, of men, women and children, it was im-
a hundred canoes betwixt us and the breakers all paddling off to- possible to form any idea of them, the whole Coast was lined with
wards the ship." This, their first close glimpse of the island and first them as far as we could see."
impression of its people, was the morning of June 20, though the The visitors' apprehension was justified. A crowd, probably
log reads June 19 because they changed the day at noon rather than under the direction of a local priest, did indeed attack the Dolphin
midnight. (As late as 1825, the English captain Byron remarked with stones, to everyone's regret: the guns the English used to re-
that two Hawaiian teachers had been brought up in the United taliate "struck such terror amongst the poor unhappy crowd that
States, "where the Jewish method of reckoning time is observed, it would require the pen of Milton to describe...." But following
and the day begins and ends at noon".) The discovery of the boun- that unfortunate episode, peaceable relations ensued. After scraping
tiful island could not have been more fortuitous. Captain Wallis, banks that now bear the vessel's name, the Dolphin safely anchored
the first lieutenant, and thirty other seamen were ill, some so bad in Matavai Bay, which they named Port Royal. To the land itself
that the doctor "expected Death to seize them soon, if timely relief they gave the name King George's Island. The crew privileged to
was not found, on this pleasant and delightful country." the sole unspoiled European glimpse of Tahitian civilization stayed
The English successfully communicated their desire to barter just over one month.
for hogs and chickens by imitating the noises of each. Canoes No detailed survey of the island was made, though a midship-
brought food supplies and trade was facilitated with that seeming- man named Pinnock drew its rough outline (Fig. 137). On July 24,
ly inevitable commodity of the Polynesians, nails. When the first George Robertson consulted an astronomical almanac and realized
Tahitian risked accepting the strangers' invitation to board their that a solar eclipse would occur the following day over Mexico and
vessel, he was harshly kicked and fled back to the safety of the Peru. He calculated that it should be visible at their present location
sea—the culprit a goat oblivious to the temporary diplomatic as well, and that night regulated the watches in preparation. Early
damage he had just caused. the next morning, Robertson and Pinnock went to shore with a
"At sunrise," on the journal dated 24 June (i.e. June 25), "about dark glass scavenged from a sextant, a reflecting telescope, spy-glass,
three hundred canoes came off and lay round the ship, as many as and watch, hoping to use the eclipse to fix the longitude of their
could conveniently lay alongside traded very fair and took nails and new-found island. Pinnock was asked "to take the Altitude of the
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 141

MOW

Fig. 136. Mouillage De Pape Iti, view of Papeete from d'Urville's Voyages. By Lemercier, 1830.

Sun, and work the true time of the Day." The eclipse was slight; A lively friendship ensued between the Tahitians and their
Robertson mused that had it been dramatic, they could have gotten exotic visitors. Nails quickly became the medium with which sail-
whatever they wanted from the Tahitians as Columbus had from ors thanked friendly girls, and soon two-thirds of the sailors were
the natives of Jamaica. Once the sun and moon yielded their clues, sleeping on deck for having given away their hammock nails. When
their longitude was determined to be 150° W, about 45 kilometers some girls began exacting seven or nine inch spikes, the safety of
too far west as measured from Papeete—but respectable enough the vessel itself was compromised and the romances interrupted.
for a preliminary reading taken in unknown Pacific waters without The map of Tahiti produced by Pinnock was no more than a
a chronometer. Hawkesworth's Voyages, containing an account of rough beginning to the surveying of the island, but its location was
the voyage written as though it were Wallis's words, simply records ascertained with sufficient accuracy, and its suitability for hosting
that on that morning "I [Wallis] took a guard on shore, and erected European explorers amply demonstrated.
a tent on a point of land, to observe an eclipse of the sun, which, Tahiti was "discovered" again the following year by Louis
the morning being very clear, was done with great accuracy." Antoine de Bougainville (Fig. 138). "With joy we saw fires burning
Not only did the English receive the finest fruits and meat to on every part of the coast, and from thence concluded that it was
aid in recovery of their health, but also the therapeutic power of inhabited," he wrote. Many canoes approached the vessel, and one,
the island's hospitality. When some elderly Tahitian men observed "manned by twelve naked men" offered branches of banana, "and
that the young English sailors (most of whom were in their teens their demonstrations signified that this was their olive-branch....
and early twenties), "could not help feasting their Eyes" on several As we ran along the coast, our eyes were struck with the sight of a
nearby girls, they "made signs for our people to take which they beautiful cascade, which came from the tops of the mountains, and
liked best, and as many as they liked.... This piece of news made all poured its foaming waters into the sea. A village was situated at the
our men madly fond of the shore, even the sick which had been on foot of this cascade, and there appeared to be no breakers in this
the Doctor's list... they were Certain of recovering faster under a part of the coast." Bougainville wanted to anchor "within reach of
Young Girl's care nor all the Doctor would do for them. We passed this beautiful spot," but the nature of the sea bottom forced them
this Night very merry, supposing all hostilities was now over, and "to go in search of another anchorage." They found a suitable
to our great joy it so happened." landing in Hitiaa Lagoon.
Fig. 137. Manuscript map of Tahiti, Pinnock, 1767. South is at the top, so Papeete is in the lower right. [British Library, Add MS 15499 £23]

Bougainville's account of his approach to Tahiti was so influ- us to choose a woman, and to come on shore with her; and their
ential in creating the mystique of Polynesia that it is worthy of gestures, which were nothing less than equivocal, denoted in what
repeating extracts here: "As we came nearer the shore, the number manner we should form an acquaintance with her. It was very diffi-
of islanders surrounding our ships encreased. The periaguas were cult, amidst such a sight, to keep at their work four hundred young
so numerous all about the ships, that we had much to do to warp French sailors, who had seen no women for six months. In spite
in amidst the croud of boats and the noise. All these people came of all our precautions, a young girl came on board, and placed her-
crying out tayo, which means friend, and gave a thousand signs of self upon the quarter-deck, near one of the hatchways, which was
friendship; they all asked nails and ear-rings of us. The periaguas open, in order to give air to those who were heaving at the capstern
were full of females, who, for agreeable features, are not inferior to [capstan] below it. The girl carelessly dropt a cloth, which covered
most European women; and who in point of beauty of the body her, and appeared to the eyes of all beholders, such as Venus shewed
might, with much reason, vie with them all. Most of these fair herself to the Phrygian sheperd, having, indeed, the celestial form
females were naked; for the men and the old women that accom- of that goddess. Both sailors and soldiers endeavored to come to
panied them, had stripped them of the garments which they gen- the hatch-way; and the capstern was never hove with more alacrity
erally dress themselves in. The glances which they gave us from than on this occasion."
their periaguas, seemed to discover some degree of uneasiness, Bougainville made no pretense that the officers were not equally
notwithstanding the innocent manner in which they were given; affected as the sailors: "At last our cares succeeded in keeping these
perhaps, because nature has every where embellished their sex with bewitched fellows in order, though it was no less difficult to keep
a natural timidity; or because even in those countries, where the the command of ourselves." The surreal comedy continued when
ease of the golden age is still in use, women seem least to desire one Frenchman, Bougainville's cook, "having found means to
what they most wish for. The men, who were more plain, or rather escape against my orders, soon returned more dead than alive"—
more free, soon explained their meaning very clearly. They pressed but not because he had in any way been harmed. No sooner had
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 143

Fig. 138. La Nouvelle Cythere, View of Tahiti, Bougainville, 1768. Bougainville noted that the Tahitians set up fires to alert those in canoes of the locations of sharp reefs.
Tahiti's reef is "unequally covered by the sea, and forming little isles in some parts ... on which the islanders keep up fires at night on account of their fishery, and for the
safety of their navigation." [Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris] Overleaf. Fig. 139. James Cooks manuscript of his map of Tahiti, 1769. [British Library, Add MS 7085 f.6]

the disobedient cook "set his feet on the shore, with the fair whom anchor all conspired to keep the island from being better mapped.
he had chosen," when a "crowd of Indians" undressed him and Nonetheless, Vernon established latitude "in our camp, from
"tumultuously examined every part of his body." After satisfying several meridian altitudes of the sun, observed on shore with a
their curiosity, the Tahitians "returned to him his clothes, put into quadrant," and measured longitude "by eleven observations of
his pockets whatever they had taken out of them, and brought the moon, according to the method of the horary angles."
the girl to him, desiring him to content those desires which had Many other observations had been made on shore during a
brought him on shore with her." But the fellow was so undone period of four days and four nights, but Vernon's papers became
with fright at his "examination" that he was no longer able to do a casualty of the islanders' adeptness at theft. Those having disap-
anything with the girl, indeed so frightened that the islanders peared, they had to rely only on the readings made the day before
"were obliged to bring the poor cook on board." their departure. The astronomer "believes their result exact enough,
Bougainville first named the land New Cytheria after the though their extremes differ among themselves 7° or 8°. The loss
island to which Aphrodite was first brought after her birth on the of our anchors, and all the accidents I have mentioned before,
sea, though he also noted that it "is known by the name of Taiti obliged us to leave this place much sooner than we intended, and
amongst its inhabitants." He met a different crowd of Tahitians have made it impossible for us to survey its coasts."
than Wallis, his anchorage being about 40 kilometers around the More than Wallis, Bougainville discovered in Tahiti a part of
coast to the east, but saw enough evidence of the previous Euro- the European psyche—the Noble Savage, that imaginary counter-
pean landing that he knew his was not a discovery. weight to the frenetic competition, material greed, guilt, and hypo-
Surveying the unknown, seemingly idyllic island was, of course, crisy of European civilization. That the discovery of Tahiti and
a high priority. Despite this, Bougainville contributed little to the similar Polynesian islands coincided with the Age of Enlighten-
mapping of Tahiti. Of the maps published with the account of his ment and the French Revolution is not entirely coincidental; early
voyage, one included Tahiti, and although wisely only the observed accounts of these Polynesian civilizations—or the "spin" given
coasts were delineated, even Wallis's cursory data was more com- these reports by land-bound commentators—helped fuel social
prehensive. "The southern part of it is entirely unknown to us," movements championing the cause of the common man. At a time
M. Vernon, Bougainville's astronomer, conceded, so their simple when the flaws of Western Civilization were particularly ripe fodder
map leaves the south open. Winds, islanders, and the loss of their for debate and even rebellion, Man in his primal Innocence had
146 Early Mapping of the Pacific

been discovered in Oceania. The Paradise that medieval geog- Admiralty: the best Pacific locale for the new expedition to observe
raphers had placed in some amorphous location on the opposite the transit of Venus predicted for June 3, 1769 (see also page 109
side of the earth had indeed, so it seemed, been discovered. above). Thus, Tahiti was set as Cook's first destination.
This romance with Tahiti put the Pacific on the "map" with Wallis's new-found island was first visible from the Endeavour
new-found fascination. Never before had Pacific islands been the on April 11, three weeks before the Transit was to occur. Two days
subject of such quick assimilation into the world view, or the sub- later, Cook anchored in Matavai Bay and began preparations for
ject of such discussion. Even the Pacific Islanders' reputation for the celestial event. As recorded in the Philosophical Transactions
"stealing" became a "positive" attribute, being used to question of 1771, "the astronomical clock ... set up in the middle of one end
core tenets of Western values. Once it was understood that the of a large tent" was well-anchored "to prevent its being disturbed
islanders did not have the Western idea of ownership, some Euro- by any accident," and its pendulum was adjusted "to exactly the
pean writers then viewed the entire concept of private property same length as it had been at Greenwich." The observatory had the
with suspicion, an artificial convention which was not necessarily "journeyman clock" and astronomical quadrant of one foot radius
a natural law. Herman Melville later described Tahiti as the place which "stood on the head of a large cask fixed firm in the ground,
where Christ should have come to the world. Polynesians, he ar- and well filled with wet heavy sand." A sentinel always stood guard
gued during the height of Christian proselytizing, should become over the tent and observatory "with orders to suffer no one to enter
missionaries and spread their ways to the "civilized" countries. the one or the other, but those whose business it was." Two reflect-
ing telescopes "of two feet focus each, made by the late Mr. James
Tahiti and the Mapping of the Cosmos Short" were set up for the event, "one of which was furnished with
When Wallis reached England on May 20, 1768, a new expedition an object glass micrometer."
was being prepared which would leave in a few months under the On the heralded day of June 3, the weather was kind to the
command of James Cook in the Endeavour. Wallis s news of a fruit- scientists, "as favorable to our purpose as we could wish, not a
ful island at 150° W longitude was fortuitous, as it supplied the Cloud was to be seen the whole day and the Air was perfectly
perfect answer to a question then being discussed by Cook and the clear." Yet something went wrong. When Venus began its transit,

Fig. 140. Tahiti alter Cook, Cassini, 1798. [Kauai Fine Arts]
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 147

Fig. 141. Map of the Society Islands and neighboring Polynesia, based on the information of Tupaia, a Tahitian navigator and priest from Raiatea, as received by
James Cook on his first Pacific voyage. It is not clear how faithfully this rendering reflects Tupaia's geography, as it was subject to Cook's own interpretation of his
information, as well as possible subsequent "corrections," emendations, and copyist liberties. An earlier manuscript version attributed to Cook differs markedly.
From Johann Reinhold Forster's Observations made during a voyage round the world..., London, 1778. [Library of Congress]

"we very distinctly saw an Atmosphere or dusky shade round the The last day of June brought them to the southwest corner
body of the Planet," a phenomenon which became known as "black and a slow passage through reefs and shoals, finishing the circuit
drop." The differences among the observations made at Point to Matavai Bay by foot. Six days they had surveyed and explored
Venus, and by two other parties that had observed the transit from the reefs and coast, five nights camping away from the security of
neighboring islands, disappointed their hopes of high accuracy. the Endeavour and Matavai Bay. "We had neither of us a change of
But the geographic mapping of Tahiti itself held no such mys- Cloaths with us," Banks wrote upon returning to the Endeavour's
teries (Fig. 139). At three in the morning on June 26, Cook and anchorage, "so little did either of us expect to go round the Island
Banks left Matavai Bay for a clockwise survey of the island, partly when we set out from Matavie."
by boat, partly by foot. "Captn Cook and myself set out to the With this first European circumnavigation of Tahiti, they had
eastward in the pinnace," Banks wrote in his journal, "intending compiled the raw data to compose the first competent map of the
if it was convenient to go round the Island, the weather calm and island. The result was a map of the island which "altho it can not
pleasant. We rowed till 8 and then went ashore in a district called be very accurate," Cook explained, "yet it will be found sufficient
Otiana" where he and Cook landed while the boat crew conducted to point out the Situations of the different Bays and harbours and
soundings. After weaving their way to Hitiaa, they were shown the the figure of the Island and I believe is without any material error."
site of a previous European anchorage and camp. This was Boug- Along with the map of Tahiti, the printed account of the First Voy-
ainville's, though Cook, who sailed before the French explorer's age contained small maps of Matavai Bay, of their anchorage on
return, believed it to be a Spanish ship out of South America. the west coast of Huahine, and two bays on Raiatea.
Cook and Banks continued on foot to Taravao, beyond which The most obvious weakness in Cook's map of Tahiti is its de-
passage from Tahiti Nui (western Tahiti) to Tahiti Iti (eastern) piction of Moorea, which has little resemblance to the island's
proved impossible; the boat helped briefly, then by foot again actual shape. Despite its proximity to Tahiti, Cook himself did not
before Tautira, then back to the boat. A native pilot guided them visit Moorea until his third voyage. Banks had been there briefly
around the cliffs and reefs of the southeastern point of the island. when its tiny offshore island of Motu Irioa was used by his party to
Much of the south side of Tahiti was traveled by sea, Cook and observe the transit of Venus; even after Cook visited Moorea on his
Banks stopping to record such marvels of Tahitian culture as the final voyage and mapped one of its harbors, the original depiction
imposing marae at Mahaiatea, made from coral stone and basalt. of the island itself remained on most charts for some years.
148 Early Mapping of the Pacific

The Tahitian Navigator, Tupaia Cook took Tupaia aboard the Endeavour to help him map the
With Banks' encouragement, Cook befriended a navigator and other members of the archipelago, the Tahitian guiding them and
priest from the island of Raiatea by the name of Tupaia. Since citing the name of each island. According to Forster, Tupaia, "when
Tupaia had "great experience and knowledge in navigation, and on board the Endeavour, gave an account of his navigations and
was particularly acquainted with the number and situation of the mentioned the names of more than eighty isles which he knew,
neighbouring islands" (Hawkesworth), Cook attempted to record together with the size and situation, the greater part of which he
that geographic knowledge on a European-style map (Fig. 141). had visited, and having soon perceived the meaning and use of
Although he states in his journal that Tupaia set his geographic charts, he gave directions for making one according to his account,
information to paper with his "own hands," the earliest extant and always pointed to the part of the heavens, where each isle was
version is one drawn by Cook himself in 1769, a manuscript that situated, mentioning at the same time that it was either larger or
was obscure until modern times. Tupaia's map became known smaller than Taheitee, and likewise whether it was high or low,
instead through a rendering, bearing little relation to Cook's whether it was peopled or not, adding now and then some curious
surviving manuscript, that was engraved for a book by the natu- accounts relative to some of them." First "Tetiroah" (Tetiaroa) was
ralist on the second voyage, Johann Reinhold Forster. sighted, then "Huaheine" (Huahine), "Ulietea" (Raiatea, Tupaia's
Analysis of Tupaia's map is hampered not only by uncertainty home), "Otahau" (Tahaa) "Bolabola" (Bora Bora), and "Maow-
over how faithful either the Cook or Banks/Forster version is to rooah" (Maurua). From Raiatea, Cook headed south to where
what Tupaia intended—whether or not Tupaia actually drew one Tupaia claimed more islands would be found, and "Oheteroa"
himself—but also by other questions. Misunderstandings over the (Rurutu) was sighted on August 13.
directions of islands versus winds may have caused the English Forster acquired his copy of Tupaia's chart from Lieutenant
to reverse the Tahitian's cardinal directions, or suspicion of such Pickersgill, who had been in Tahiti both with Wallis and then with
misunderstandings may have caused Cook or later transcribers of Cook on the first voyage. He compared it "with another copy of the
the chart to "correct" Tupaia's data. If Tupaia's knowledge of some chart, drawn after Tupaya's direction, in the possession of Joseph
islands had been garnered through the arrival of waif voyagers, his Banks, Esq. who, with great politeness and well known readiness
bearings may have been skewed if the immigrants reached Tahitian to promote whatever has a tendency to become subservient to
shores other than from the direction of their home. Cook's trans- science, permitted me to take a copy of it."
literations of place names has left the intended identity of many Forster's reaction to Banks's map suggests that this was a third
islands in question, as has Tupaia's use of old Tahitian names. version. Banks is known to have acquired a copy of Tupaia's map
These questions aside, Tupaia seems, of course, to have been from Cook, yet Forster, comparing the one he had engraved to that
familiar with the Society Islands, and reasonably familiar with the which Banks showed him, cites only their similarity: "I remarked
Marquesas to the northeast—not surprising given the evidence of that the charts both agreed in general, and that the catalogues con-
active trade between Tahiti and the Marquesas when the Europeans tained all the names which were found on the charts, and some few
entered the scene. But if Tupaia was adequately knowledgeable more, not inserted in them. I collected likewise many names and
about more distant islands to have been able to sail to them with accounts of islands, when we were at Taheitee and the Society Isles.
confidence, the map as it survives does not reflect this. Some of the names were strangely spelt, as there never were two
Forster studied the Society Islanders' navigational techniques persons, in the last and former voyages, who spelt the same name
and the extent of their geographic knowledge. "They know that the in the same manner; it must therefore happen, that some of the
fixed stars do not change their position in regard to one another," names seemed to be different; though upon a more critical exami-
he observed, "and have by long experience discovered which stars nation, I found them to agree better than might at first sight have
rise and set at certain seasons of the year; by their help they deter- been expected: this chart I have caused to be engraved as a monu-
mine the progressive motion of the planets, and the points of the ment to the ingenuity and geographical knowledge of the people
compass during night. Tupaia was so well skilled in this, that when- in the Society Isles, and of Tupaya in particular...."
ever they came with the ship during the navigation of nearly a year, The map (Fig. 141) covers about 40 degrees of longitude,
previous to the arrival of the Endeavour at Batavia, he could always centered at about 150° W, and about 20 degrees of latitude, from
point out the direction in which Taheitee was situated." about 7° S to 27° S. Although during the first Cook voyage,
Tupaia's abilities would not be of value beyond the immediate Tupaia's inventory of islands was certainly tapped to locate other
archipelagos. "It is very well known that their imperfect astro- islands, by the time Forster's book was published, the map had
nomical knowledge is only applicable to the parts of the world become just an ethnographic document: "It cannot be expected
which are near to O-Taheitee, as the appearances would be greatly that this chart should be of such accuracy as to enable future navi-
altered at a moderate distance from their isle." However, his "mod- gators to make use of it: it is chiefly intended to give some idea of
erate share of astronomy ... did not hinder them from acquiring the geography of the inhabitants of the isles of the South Sea."
a very extensive knowledge of the islands in the neighborhood." Cook made two visits to Tahiti on his second voyage, the first
Tupaia, who Forster described as "the most intelligent man that in August 1773. The astronomer William Wales set up an observ-
ever was met with by any European navigator in these isles," had atory on Point Venus, where the transit of Venus had been observed
sailed ten or twelve days west of Raiatea, which would have placed on the first voyage. When the expedition returned to Tahiti later in
him "400 leagues, or about twenty degrees of longitude" away, the second voyage, we see Tahiti reversing its role from the island
according to Cook's estimate of daily sailing distance. whose position should be ascertained to being the "constant" by
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 149

which chronometers could be calibrated. The longitude of Point

Venus had been established with precision; its observatory now
served as the first mid-Pacific point by which instruments could
be set in order to map other shores accurately.
Cook concluded his second voyage's account of the Society
Islands with "some observations on the watch which Mr. Wales
hath communicated to me. At our arrival in Matavai Bay in Otah-
eite, the longitude pointed out by the watch was 2° 8' 38ill " too
far to the West; that is, it had gained, since our leaving Queen
Charlotte's Sound ... it was judged that half of this error arose after
we left Easter Island; by which it appeared that it went better in
the cold than in the hot climates."
An observatory was again set up at Point Venus when Cook
returned to Tahiti on his third voyage in August 1777. Cook's
principal contributions in Tahiti this visit were ethnographical,
providing a fine account of various aspects of island culture. His
Fig. 142. View of Opunohu Bay, Moorea, James Wilson, 1799. The name "Taloo"
description of a human sacrifice helped put European romantic- came from the bay's Tareu Rock.
ization of the island into better perspective.
Surprisingly, the neighboring island of Moorea, though only
about 17 kilometers from Tahiti, had never been visited by Cook, fed by the rain and rivers from Papenoo crater above. The United l
and the inept delineation given the island on the otherwise fine States Exploring Expedition, which reached Tahiti in September
map of Tahiti Cook composed in 1769 (Fig. 139) suggests that no 1839, investigated the lake and placed it at 2000 feet above sea
serious effort had been made to chart it. Thus Moorea now became level—a bit above its true height of 473 meters. When Captain
his first stop when, after one and a half months, he left Papeete and Henry Martin visited Vaihiria in 1847, reaching it in "four hours
began one final sweep to the west before undertaking his assign- hard walking from Papeuriri," he was skeptical about the subter-
ment in the Northwest Coast. ranean outlet that was supposed to exist to account for the changes
Cook sailed west past the bay now named for him but which in the lake's water level. "The marks on the shore show that when
he never visited (Cook's "Parowroah"), instead choosing Opunohu the water is 20 feet higher it remains long enough to give ample
Bay (Cook's "Taloo") for his anchorage (Fig. 143). Although time for evaporation. The eels in this lake are said to be immense
Parowroah is the larger harbor, Cook explained that its "entrance, and dangerous to swimmers. Its calm placid surface reflecting every
or opening in the reef (for the whole island is surrounded by a reef object of the wild savage scenery around had a remarkable & an
of coral rock) is considerably narrower, and lies to leeward of the agreeable effect." The lake's eels gave rise to one of Tahiti's best-
harbor. These two defects are so striking, that the harbor of Taloo known legends, Princess Hina.
must always have a decided preference."
The people of Moorea were at first leery of the English, sus-
pecting that they had aided the Tahitians in an attack against their
island, but nonetheless courteous and obliging. After Cook liberal-
ly provisioned the ship and attempted to coax its rat infestation
ashore, a dispute over a goat led to tragedy. Cook retaliated for the
perceived offense by reaping widespread havoc to the island, his
vengeance both terrifying and indiscriminate. Nor, if the printed
account fairly reflects his sentiments, did he ever see the madness
of his actions even when other officers did; he refers to the incident
as "unfortunate" while insisting that "it was their own fault." This
was the tiring Cook, not the level-headed commander.

Later Explorers and Missionaries Map Tahiti

A new map of Tahiti was compiled in May 1797 by the first English
missionary voyage to the island, that of James Wilson in the vessel
Duff (Fig. 144). The map brought together the original map of
Cook, refinements to that chart made by Cook on his subsequent
voyages, and the observations of Wilson, resulting in various im-
provements, notably the shape of the eastern portion of the island.
The Wilson map records a small body of water just southeast
Fig. 143. Opunohu Bay, Moorea, James Cook, 1784. Although Banks visited
of the mountainous center of the western half (Fig. 145). Marked Moorea on the first voyage, Cook himself, despite the island s proximity to
"Curious Lake" on the map, this is Vaihiria, Tahiti's only real lake, Tahiti, did not go there until the third voyage.
150 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 144. Tahiti, James Wilson, 1799.

Tahiti's shores quickly became the most cosmopolitan in the

south Pacific. Most exploring expeditions refreshed there, Frey-
cinet's being the notable exception, though only contrary winds
kept him away. Whalers made themselves at home there, many
opting to settle, Western governments fought for influence and
privilege there, and missionaries vied for its people's souls.
When Otto von Kotzebue reached Tahiti in March 1824 on
his second voyage, he found a different world than what Wallis,
Bougainville, and Cook had seen a half century early. None of the
splendid canoes were to be seen. Dancing and the nose flute, icons
of Tahitian civilization, were strictly outlawed. Even the objects of
barter had succumbed to the missionary's laws: Kotzebue's crew
conducted a brisk business in a most unlikely commodity, selling
their old clothes to theTahitians at phenomenal prices.
After ten days in Tahiti, Kotzebue "steered past the Society
Islands, lying to leeward from Tahiti, in order to rectify their longi-
tude." He fixed the western point of Raiatea at 151° 2 6 ' 30", Fig. 145. Vaihiria Lake, detail from the map of Tahiti by James Wilson, 1799.
"which is nearly the same as on the maps," and was within about
y of actual. He found the Society Island longitudes laid down by
his predecessors to be reasonably accurate, with the exception of its southern coast, to be 152° 10' 40"." This figure, which is about
Maupiti (his Maurura), which "is very inaccurately laid down; we 81/2 kilometers too far east, is not so different from Cook's map, in
found the longitude of the middle of the island, as we sailed past which the island's western coast skims the 152° mark.
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 151

Fig. 146. The first map of the Hawaiian Islands, from the published account of Cook's third voyage, 1784. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd] Overleaf. Fig. 147. Northern
Pacific, Pierre du Val, 1679 (1684). One sheet of a four-sheet world map. [Martayan Lan, NY]

The European Discovery of Hawaii expressing their entire ignorance about every thing they saw."
"Before I sailed from the Society Islands," James Cook says of his Despite the importance of the discovery, their priority had to be
final departure from the islands in early December 1777, "I lost to reach northern waters at the right time of year, and so this initial
no opportunity of inquiring of the inhabitants, if there were any encounter with Hawaii was brief. However, when the summer
islands in a North or North West direction from them." They came to a close, wintering in Kamchatka would have meant a half
seemed not to know of any However, a low atoll was discovered year of fruitless waiting, so after their successful northern mapping
on the 24th of December, which provided a bounty of turtles for endeavors and unsuccessful attempt to find a Northwest Passage,
food and solid ground to set up three telescopes to observe an they sailed back to their new-found islands. The last words Cook
eclipse of the sun which would occur on the 30th. They named the authored in the official account of the voyage were written nearing
island after Christmas. Cook did not consider a minor discovery Hawaii for the second time: "I had no where, in the course of my
such as this to be remarkable or unexpected. voyages, seen so numerous a body of people assembled at one place.
Continuing north, they began to see birds and turtles, and For, besides those who had come off to us in canoes, all the shore
probably prepared to record another minor isle. But when on the of the bay was covered with spectators, and many hundreds were
morning of January 18, 1778, land was seen to the northeast which swimming round the ships like shoals offish."
was not on their charts, it was formidable and populated—Oahu, To their having failed to find a Northwest Passage, "we owed
this the recorded European discovery of Hawaii. Soon Kauai was our having it in our power to revisit the Sandwich Islands, and to
seen to the north. The following morning Oahu stood nearby to enrich our voyage with a discovery which, though the last, seemed,
the east, but winds prevented their approach, so they sailed for in many respects, to be the most important that had hitherto been
Kauai, thus soon sighting Niihau as well. When, upon reaching the made by Europeans, throughout the extent of the Pacific Ocean."
coast of Kauai, canoes approached with three to six men in each, Cook had no illusion that their initial visit had been sufficient
"we were agreeably surprised to find, that they spoke the language for even a cursory map, yet when Maui came into view he realized
of Otaheite." The next morning, the 20th, a suitable landing was that the archipelago was larger than thought. "We were now satis-
found. Of the Hawaiians that crowded aboard the ship, Cook fied, that the group of the Sandwich Islands had been only imper-
remarked that he had "never before met with the natives of any fectly discovered; as those of them which we had visited in our
place so much astonished ... their eyes were continually flying progress Northward, all lie to the leeward of our present station."
from object to object; the wildness of their looks and gestures fully On December 4, they were on the northern coast of Hawaii,
154 Early Mapping of the Pacific

east of the Kohala Mountains at the base of the island's northern Gaytan, named Islas de la Mesa, has engendered particular attention
peninsula. An eclipse of the moon was observed from the coast and is found, for example, on Spanish charts won by Anson during
by James King with a night-telescope, "a circular aperture being his circumnavigation (Fig. 111). Anson's map also places an Is Lz de
placed at the object end, about one-third the size of the common Sn. Francisco at about the latitude of the island of Hawaii, and in
aperture," and observed by Cook "with the telescope of one of roughly the correct longitude.
Ramsden's sextants," a reference to the innovations of the instru- A more intriguing suggestion of early Spanish knowledge of
ment maker Jesse Ramsden. Hawaii is found in a map by Pierre du Val (Fig. 147), published
The mean of the two results was 204° 3 5 ' E. But immediately exactly a century before Cook's discovery of the islands. les Moines,
after the eclipse finished, both Cook and King "observed the dis- la Vezina, and la Disgraciee lie in "precisely" the correct latitude, just
tance of each limb of the moon from thepollux and Arietis; the one south of the Tropic of Cancer, needing but a bit of imagination to
being to the East, and the other to the West." "Pollux" is a star near "look" like Hawaii. Although they lie too far east, their longitude
Castor, in Gemini, and "Arietis" was the name used by eighteenth- is little worse than that assigned some "known" islands at the time.
century European sailors for the star now commonly known as Interestingly, Spanish galleys are marked brushing them to the
Hamal. These additional observations yielded a final reading of south en route to the Philippines. Perhaps most remarkable is
204° 04' 45 " E, a figure which is too far to the east and which the "inhabited island" on the 1754 map by the theorist Philippe
was later amended, as it was not followed in the published map. Buache (back endpaper), which lies in virtually the exact position
Despite the enthusiasm and generosity of the Hawaiians toward of Hawaii, about 40° W of Baja California and 19° N latitude.
the English visitors, feeding and reprovisioning them strained avail- La Perouse suspected that Hawaii was not Cook's discovery.
able resources, and most Hawaiians undoubtedly were relieved Knowing in advance the ulterior motives a French explorer might
when they set off. But damage to the Resolutions foremast forced have for proposing this, La Perouse assured his readers that "those
Cook and his crew back to Kealakekua Bay a week later, a visit who know my character cannot suspect, that I have been influ-
culminating with Cook's death. enced in this research by the desire of taking away from captain
Although some independent accounts of the voyage reached the Cook the honour of this discovery," and waxes of him as the
market quickly in response to public fascination with the expedi- greatest of navigators. When, in 1786, La Perouse sailed north
tion, none contained the map of Hawaii. The Hawaiian Islands from Easter Island for Hawaii, he deliberately reached Hawaii's
were nonetheless placed on some general maps within the first latitude far to the east so that he could search for the islands
couple of years after the expedition's return. In 1781, three years commonly found in those waters on Spanish charts, particularly
before the publication of the official account with the Hawaii map, La Mesa, Los Majos, and La Disgraciada. Failing to find any, when
a single-volume account of the voyage became popular reading in on May 28, 1786 the peaks of Hawaii appeared to the west, he
England, which though published anonymously is generally attrib- became convinced that La Mesa was one of the Hawaiian chain.
uted to Lieutenant John Rickman. The book contains a general Thus, he attributes the discovery of Hawaii to Gaytan in 1542,
Pacific map which compresses the latitudinal and longitudinal also citing the group that Gaytan dubbed Kings Islands, and the
breadth of the Hawaiian Islands, so that Hawaii itself appears a particular member Garden Island. Since the Spanish had plotted
few degrees too far north, and all the islands are to varying degrees them before longitude could be accurately laid down, the reason-
too far west. However, the volume's editor assured readers that the ing went, and since no other islands occupy those latitudes in this
map "illustrates the course with as much accuracy as is necessary part of the ocean, the Spanish discoveries must have been mem-
even for Geographers." bers of the Hawaiian group. "Upon the chart that admiral Anson
The Admiralty appears to have kept its material adequately took on board the Spanish galleon," he wrote, "and which the
safeguarded, and indeed the original survey of the islands from editor of his voyage has caused to be engraved [Fig. I l l ] , this
which the printed map was made is not extant. Since the principal cluster is placed precisely in the same latitude as the Sandwich
Hawaiian Islands are compact and few in number, one leading to Islands, and at 16 or 17° more to the eastward. My daily differences
easy sight of another, Cook and crew were able to make a compre- of longitude made me think, that these islands were the same."
hensive mapping of the newly discovered archipelago. In contrast, "But what completely convinced me," La Perouse goes on to
such groups as Fiji or Tonga required the surveys of several explor- explain with faulty logic, "was the name of Mesa, which signifies
ers just to inventory their major islands. The map's principal flaws table, given by the Spanish to the island of Owhwhee." Why was
are its omission of the southern coast of Oahu, where Honolulu this term so compelling? When Captain King (who took command
and Pearl Harbor lay, and the northern coast of Kauai. of the third Cook expedition after the latter's death) "doubled
the eastern point" of Hawaii, "they discovered a mountain called
Do Maps Record Hawaii before Cook? Mowna-roa" (Mauna Loa), whose plateau top King referred to as
Was Cook truly the European discoverer of Hawaii, despite the Table-land." La Perouse cites the Hawaiians' "commercial habits,"
north Pacific waters having been plied by European vessels for two and their knowledge of iron, "which from their own concession
and a half centuries before him? Theories have long circulated that they did not acquire from the English," as further proof "of the
any of several islands commonly seen on maps from the sixteenth frequent communication which these people have formerly had
and seventeenth centuries might be Hawaii. Islands discovered with the Spaniards." Cook did, in fact, remark that the Hawaiian
by Juan Gaytan, who sailed with Villalobos from Mexico to the already had some pieces of metal when he first reached the islands,
Philippines in 1542, are the earliest; an archipelago attributed to though this could have been the result of trade among islanders.
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 155

Kauai coasts which Cook had missed, and his mapping of the
island chain did little to add to that of Cook. The "Indians" of
Maui were exceedingly polite, La Perouse commenting that he
"had no idea of a people at once so mild and respectful." So im-
pressed was he with the Hawaiians that he made a point of placing
blame for Cook's death on the imprudence of his men who fired
without adequate provocation.
La Perouse's east-west breadth of the island of Hawaii is trun-
cated as compared with the more accurate Cook map. He did add
some detail to the portion of the southern Maui coast where he
stopped, but overall, even that island is a step backward from
Cook's chart. Nothing better could be expected with such a brief
stay, and since the commander did not live to assist in the prepara-
tion of the published materials, we do not know in what context
he would have presented his survey of the islands.
Fig. 148. Southern Maui as seen by La Perouse and crew in 1786. From
After the expedition's work along the Northwest Coast, en
La Perouse's Atlas 1797.
route to Macao they discovered Necker, thus beginning the map-
ping of the Hawaiian chain's older, smaller members extending to
While early Spanish contact with Hawaii in the form of isolated the northwest of the main, inhabited islands.
encounter or shipwreck is certainly possible, it is unlikely that it The account of La Perouse's voyage, complete with charts, was
is reflected in any map. Any encounter with the Hawaiian chain first published in Paris in 1797. Demand for the lost navigator's
would have constituted not just a major discovery in itself but in story led to the volumes being translated into English and repub-
addition a bountiful mid-Pacific stopping point, lying as it does lished in London the following year (1798). The maps were com-
about halfway between Mexico and the Philippines. That Spanish pletely re-engraved for this English edition on a slightly smaller
mariners could have reached this idyllic archipelago and not laid format. These same reduced English plates were then reworked to
claim to it, exploited it for its unique strategic value in their trans-
Pacific commerce, nor attempted colonization, strains credulity.
Fig. 149. Prepared for the printed account of La Perouse's voyage, the upper map
Then why do islands such as those cited by La Perouse lie in shows Hawaii as surveyed by the French expedition, and the lower map combines
the location of Hawaii on many early maps? The wild variation in that data with the map from Cook's voyage. This example is from a French edition
charted longitude, and even inaccuracy in latitude, placed islands published in London in 1799 from the same copperplate used for an English
edition of the previous year.
in all parts of the Pacific at the hands of various mapmakers, and
indeed it would have been far more surprising if some islands did
not find their way to the approximate position of Hawaii. Islands
can be found, on different maps and at different times, in virtually
all regions of the Pacific.
The Spanish, according to La Perouse, kept the islands from
being known because of the benefit they would offer pirates, the
Spanish themselves eventually losing memory of them. He found
the identity of the old Spanish islands with Hawaii "to be so clearly
demonstrated, that I thought it my duty to clear them away from
the surface of the sea," that is, to remove what he believed to be
the duplication of Cook's Hawaii and the old Spanish "Hawaii":
"Thinking it an important service to geography if I could succeed
in taking away" the non-existent islands on Spanish charts, errors
which "are very prejudicial to navigation," La Perouse "even formed
the design of passing between the island of Owhyhee and that of
Mowee, which the English had not been able to explore; and I
proposed to land at Mowee, to traffic there with the inhabitants
for some supplies of fresh stock, and leave it without loss of time."
Passing the "big island" of Hawaii, La Perouse's fleet anchored
near the bay on southern Maui now named for him, where a draw-
ing was made of the coast (Fig. 148). Merely two days were allotted
for his hydrographers, Dagilet and Bernizet, to survey the islands,
their urgency being the same that kept Cook's initial visit brief—
season-sensitive plans in the Northwest Coast of America. As a
result, La Perouse failed to fill in the southern Oahu and northern
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 157

serve for a French edition published in London in 1799 (Fig. 149), ham (Fig. 150), sailing in the Brigantine Hope. Ingraham's stop in
the English being rubbed from the plate and re-engraved in French. Hawaii was a purely practical one, to take on wood, water, and food
The nomenclature, and the publishing imprint from the 1798 en route from the Marquesas to the Northwest Coast of America.
issue, remained untouched. Better to "lose a little time at the Sandwich Isles than risk losing my
While La Perouse failed to remedy Cook's omission of the men by the scurvy," he wrote. He had already been to Hawaii while
southern Oahu coast, a fleet which arrived in the islands just be- employed on the Columbia on John Kendrick's enterprise.
fore him did. In late May 1786, and then again in the winter of Ingraham reached Hilo in 1791, where he traded "bits of iron
1786-7, the second English fleet to reach Hawaii, the King George hoops and nails" for pigs, fowl, taro, plantains, coconuts, and sugar
and Queen Charlotte under George Dixon and Nathaniel Portlock, cane, "beside many hundreds of fathoms of fine line of various
christened the islands' use as a way-station for purely commercial sizes." Continuing along the north coast of Hawaii, the clouds
voyages to the furs of the American Northwest. Both Dixon and cleared and Mauna Kea came into view. Ingraham recalled James
Portlock had been with Cook on the third voyage, and Portlock King's (third Cook voyage) estimate that the snow-covered
would return to the Pacific with another veteran of that voyage, mountain was higher than the peak of Tenerife (which it is).
William Bligh, when Bligh repeated the breadfruit voyage which Like Cook and most navigators bound for the Northwest
had been foiled by the Bounty mutiny on the first attempt. Coast, Ingraham visited Hawaii twice, en route to and from the
The account of Dixon's and Portlock's adventures was published northern waters. His map of Hawaii was of no influence: it had
in early 1789, and included a record of the previously unknown little to offer over existing charts, in overall accuracy fell short, and
southern coast of Oahu. The volume, however, contained no was not published in his lifetime. But his reports about the islands,
comprehensive map of its shores. Only a plan of Maunalua Bay, and his presence there, were significant, and he was among the
between Honolulu and the island's eastern coast, and a plan of a earlier Westerners to report and map the southern coast of Oahu,
bay on Niihau, were included, these having been engraved in late as well as Kauai and Niihau. On both visits, he was caught in the
1788. The account's view of Maunalua Bay, engraved in 1789, complex and violent intrigues that were embroiling the islands at
was the first published image of southern Oahu. that time. While trading amicably offshore Waikiki ("Waitietie"),
The first American map of Hawaii was that of Joseph Ingra- "a single canoe from windward arrived and put a sudden stop to

Opposite:. Fig. 150. Hawaiian Islands from Joseph Ingraham, Journal of the Brigantine Hope, 1791. [Library of Congress] Below Vig. 151. The original Russian edition
of Krusenstern's map of the Hawaiian Islands, 1827. Honolulu is mapped in an inset taken from Kotzebue's plan. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
158 Ea rly Mapping of th e Pacific

our friendship. The word koa—war—was passed from one to

another, and they immediately left us, some not even waiting to
receive pay for what they had sold."
The cause of the mapping of Hawaii had its greatest early advo-
cate in the person of George Vancouver. The map of the islands
that accompanied the printed account of Vancouver's voyage re-
mained a core survey of the islands well into the nineteenth cen-
tury. Vancouver had sailed with Cook on both the second and third
voyages, and had been slightly injured in an attack in Hawaii on
the discovering expedition. On his own expedition of 1791—5,
Vancouver made fully three trips to Hawaii. He was the first to
circumnavigate every major island, and thus unlike his predeces-
sors he was able to delineate the full coastlines of all the islands.
Overall, the published chart, said in the title to have been
compiled by Lieutenant Joseph Baker, is a marked improvement
over the maiden Cook chart. However, longitude shows mixed
results: Kahuku Point, the northernmost point on Oahu, is ex-
tremely accurate on the Vancouver map while placed a quarter
degree too far east by Cook; Vancouver places Hana, on the far
east of Maui, slightly to the west, whereas Cook had again placed
it too far east; and Kealakekua Bay, on Hawaii, is placed identically
on both maps, though curiously a more accurate figure is cited in
Vancouver's journal.
Urey Lisiansky, second in command on Krusenstern's fleet
Fig. 152. Otto von Kotzebue, detail of a fish pond within Honolulu Harbor. of two vessels that sailed to the American Northwest for the fur
Published in 1823 from Kotzebue's visit of 1816. trade, separated from his superior's vessel at Hawaii in May 1804
(Fig. 151). During this planned diversion, Lisiansky called at
Kealakekua Bay (Hawaii) and Waimea Bay (Kauai), obtaining
supplies on the first and meeting local dignitaries on the second.
Sailing from America to Canton, he was nearly wrecked on the
northern outlying Hawaiian isle that still bears his name. Of this
island which, in his words, "promises nothing to the adventurous
voyager but certain danger," he took thirty-four measurements and
ascertained a longitude of 173° 4 2 ' 3 0 " W, within about 15'of
true. Despite his map, other vessels were wrecked there, and it
was briefly called Pell when mistaken for an unknown island.
Meticulous large-scale charting began with the arrival of
Otto von Kotzebue in Hawaii in November-December 1816,
and September-October 1817. Explanations by his colleague
Dr Horner show that the chronometer had not entirely supplanted
others methods of fixing longitude: "The determination of the
longitude is made partly by chronometers, and partly by lunar
distances; with respect to the first, it is well known that the best
instruments of this kind, when they are exposed to a considerable
and continued change of temperature, gradually alter the rate of
going, and it seems too as if the effects of the cold or heat upon
the watches do not become observable, till after some days have
elapsed" ... due to the thickening or thinning "of the very small
portion of oil which these instruments still require, even when the
friction is diminished by means of diamonds." Lunar distances
"are still the best means of determining the longitude; however
they must be observed in considerable numbers, and, if possible,
with instruments that magnify powerfully."
Kotzebue speculated that England would soon claim the
Fig. 153. Otto von Kotzebue, detail of inland fish ponds from his chart of
Honolulu Harbor. The two small black rectangles on the upper left is a powder islands, indeed "perhaps already, in silence, considers them as her
magazine. Published in 1823 from Kotzebue's visit of 1816. property." While this reasonable prediction would prove wrong,
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 159

few could have imagined that Oahu's southern coast, which had Krusenstern (Fig. 151). The coordinates for their anchorage were
been poorly mapped by its earliest European visitors, would be- fixed with remarkable accuracy. Latitude, derived from the "mean
come the epicenter of the Hawaiian Islands. Yet Kotzebue already of our daily observations," was determined to be 21° 17'57", and
found Honolulu looking like a European harbor, where Chinese longitude, calculated from "the mean of lunar observations, which
porcelains had replaced native eating vessels. were repeated for several succeeding days," was 157° 52' 00" W.
Kotzebue kept a tight ship: "We had scarcely cast anchor when This would correspond to what is now Kakaako Park.
a great number of Hawaiian women surrounded the Rurick." When Kotzebue's mapping of southern Oahu brought him the island's
he refused their access to the ship, "the amicable nymphs sang to us splendor. On the morning of December 8, 1816, "at nine o'clock,
some love-songs, and turned back much astonished at our cruelty." provided with a small compass and a pocket-sextant, I began my
Early on November 27, 1816, Kotzebue "took the course to journey with Dr. Eschscholtz, and first mate, Chramtschenko,
the west point of Wahititi Bay [Waikiki], which is not to be mis- who was to assist in surveying and making plans of the coast."
taken, on account of the conical mountain there." In a footnote, Having walked inland from Honolulu for a couple of hours, they
he explains that the English call this mountain Diamond Hill stopped in a "romantic valley, where we seated ourselves under
(Diamond Head), an appellation derived from the crystals found shady bread-fruit trees, on the banks of a salt lake, the owner of
there; or, as Byron observed when there in 1825, "so called because which, a distinguished Jerri, derives considerable profit from it, as
some crystals found there had been mistaken by ignorant European
sailors for diamonds," which had resulted in a taboo being placed
on the area for a time.
Whereas today Kauai is known as the "Garden Isle," the term
was earlier associated with Oahu (today referred to as "the gather-
ing place"). Kotzebue found that "Oahu (Woahoo) is acknowledged,
both by Europeans and by the natives, to be the most fruitful of
the whole group; it is called the garden of the Sandwich islands,
and it has a right to that name, on account of its extraordinary high
state of cultivation, united with the greatest natural beauties."
Vancouver's fondness for Waikiki, Kotzebue wrote, had caused
him to miss the superior harbor of Honolulu. "We sailed past the
village of Wahititi [Waikiki], near which Vancouver cast an anchor
in a very dangerous situation, not knowing that he was in the
vicinity of a most commodious harbour, and saw through our
telescopes the village of Hana-rura [Honolulu], close to which is
the harbour of the same name." Honolulu harbor, before the ex-
tensive dredging and filling that made it into the harbor we know
today, was accessed only by a narrow opening through the coral
reef created by the outflow of Nuuanu Stream—an opening which
did not allude to the fine harbor within.
Although Vancouver missed the delights veiled by the un-
assuming entrance, two vessels, the Jackal and Prince Lee Boo,
entered it in late 1793, and three years later William Broughton
in the Providence is believed to have surveyed it; but his charts, if
they were made, are not extant. It was Broughton who is respon-
sible for the name "Honolulu." Called by the Hawaiians simply
"the harbor of Kou," Broughton dubbed it "Fair Haven," which
is Honolulu in Hawaiian.
Kotzebue's is the earliest surviving chart of Honolulu, preserv-
Fig. 154. View of the Pali (Oahu), from Auguste-Nicolas Vaillants 1836-7 visit
ing the harbor in its natural state. As with Kotzebue's other charts
in the corvette La Bonite (Bertrand, ca. 1840). "The most singular spot" wrote
of bays and harbors, the Honolulu chart is important not only Byron when visiting Oahu in 1825, "is, undoubtedly, the Parre [Pali], or preci-
for its detail and accuracy, but additionally for the topographical pice, on the weather side. The path which leads to it from Honolulu winds along
the beautiful and fertile valley of Anu Anu, and thence ascends gradually, for eight
features he included. If merely useful landmarks for his contemp- miles, through a cultivated and populous district, separated, by a pretty stream,
oraries, these are now invaluable records of what occupied Hawaii- from a thick wood, which we crossed, completely sheltered from the midday sun,
an shores during this critical transitional period. He records the and found ourselves suddenly on the brink of a precipice some thousands of feet
above the grassy plain below. The descent to this plain, which, like that of Hono-
interconnected, irrigated fields where the Hawaiians grew taro, and ruru, extends to the sea, is the most fearful imaginable. In many places the path
the coral stone fish ponds by Nuuanu Stream and southeast of the consists of little more than holes cut in the rock for the hands and feet; and, where
most commodious, it lies along narrow ledges, where a false step would be inevit-
harbor entrance, contained on both sides by a broad coral reef, and
able destruction." And indeed, Byron then cites the famous victory of Kame-
shows the then new fort. Two details are illustrated in Figs. 152 hameha, who drove his adversaries off the pali to leave him the island unopposed.
and 153. The entire chart can be seen as the inset on the map of This dramatic pass is now spanned by a modern highway
160 Early Mapping of the Pacific

the banks of this lake are covered with the finest salt." There a type probably an independent "discovery" of Tabuaeran, first found by
of flightless bird was seen, and one specimen shot. Kotzebue used Edmund Fanning in 1798, in the Line Islands (Kiribati).
conjecture about a certain wild duck's migratory patterns to Kotzebue lamented the harm being done Hawaii by the dregs
theorize that an undiscovered Pacific island lay at about 45° N. of sailors and missionaries alike. "It is to be expected that the
Kotzebue tried to fix the height of the islands' principal moun- good disposition of the Sandwich islanders will soon be entirely
tains, reversing the relative heights of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. corrupted," he wrote, referring to the influence of the many sailors
Such estimates, even if not cited numerically on maps, helped with that were taking up residence in the islands after being discharged
the growing use of three-dimensional shading to depict mountains from their service for bad conduct. But "the missionaries do them
and other topographical features, though this technique was diffi- almost more injury, because, by the religious hatred which they
cult to regulate and often produced misleading impressions of excite, they destroy whole nations."
height. Mountain height was of concern to navigation for the Change, indeed, was dramatic. Whaling ships began arriving
effects it had on winds. "I advise every navigator who sails from in 1819, and a company of missionaries on the Thaddeus the
Owhyee to Woahoo," Kotzebue wrote, "to keep near the coast, following year. The need for a pier in Honolulu Harbor was first
where the land and sea-winds blow the freshest; whereas at a remedied in 1825 by sinking the hull of a derelict ship, near what
distance of the several miles from land, calms prevail, which are is now Pier 12, where Nuuana Avenue and Bethel Street end.
caused by the Mouna Roa." Louis Freycinet reached Hawaii from the Marianas in August
While in Hawaii, Kotzebue was told by a Mr. Wilcox, owner of 1819. In charge of Freycinet's hydrographic surveys was Louis Du-
an American vessel, Traveller of Philadelphia, of islands discovered perrey, later to achieve fame on his own Pacific voyage. First visiting
by a Captain Andrew Walther, "low coral islands, over-grown with the island of Hawaii, Duperrey surveyed Kailua (his Kayakakoua)
woods," and about 30 miles in circumference. He fixed the latitude and Kawaihae Bay (Kohai-Hai). From the "Big Island," the Uranie
at 3° 4 8 ' and the longitude, by chronometer, at 159° 15'. This was moved to Maui, where the first chart of the growing town of

Fig. 155. Lahaina, Maui, charted by Louis Duperrey in 1819 while on the Freycinet expedition, and published in 1826. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 161

Fig. 156. Kilauea volcano, Hawaii, by Charles Maiden, 1826. "Words are totally inadequate to describe the effect produced on us by the first sight of that dark fiery gulf.
From its brink, where we stood, we looked down for more than thirteen hundred feet, over rocks of lava and columns of sulphur, between whose antique fissures a few
green shrubs and juicy berry-bearing plants had fixed themselves, to a rugged plain, where many a cone, raised by the action of the fire below, was throwing up columns
of living flame, and whirls of smoke and vapour, while floods of liquid fire were slowly winding through scoriae and ashes, here yellow with sulphur, and there black,
or grey, or red, as the materials which the flames had wrought on varied.... Not less than fifty cones, of various height, appeared below us as the funnels of the various
operations going on. At least one half of these were in activity, but it appears that the same are by no means constantly so; nay, that often older cones fall in, and new
ones are formed elsewhere in the bottom of the pit.... Night increased the magnificence, perhaps the horror, of the scene. T h e volcano caused what Defoe calls a terrible
light in the air'. The roar occasioned by the escape of the pent up elements, and the fearful character of the surrounding scenery, suited with that light; and all impressed
us with the sense of the present Deity, such as when from Sinai he gave, with thunderings and with lightenings, the tables of the law."

Lahaina was composed (Fig. 155). The coordinates of Lahaina vessel Blonde, reached Hilo on May 3, 1825, where their five
were placed with great accuracy, longitude being set at 159° 0 2 ' chronometers were used to fix longitude at 155° 20', a point about
02 " west of Paris, which is within a few kilometers of true, depend- 25 kilometers inland from Hilo. Then, in "double-hilled Maui,"
ing on his exact observation point. Oahu was visited and Honolulu the longitude of Lahaina was measured at 156° 0 5 ' , a less accurate
(Onorourou) surveyed, complementing the charts of the harbor figure than that earlier ascertained by Duperrey.
already made by the Russian expeditions of Otto von Kotzebue In Honolulu, their next anchorage, Byron was taken by the
(1816) and Vasili Golovnin (1818). extent to which Hawaii had already became internationalized.
An American captain in charge of a British whaler, calling at Byron remarks on the "artifacts" industry that had already devel-
Honolulu in 1823, was retained by King Liholiho and Queen oped to satisfy the European demand. He met a Tahitian man who
Kamamalu to bring them and their retinue to England. Within had served in the British Navy and fought in Algiers, and when
several weeks of their arrival, both were dead from London's two of his scientists investigated the Pali (Fig. 154), they stayed
measles epidemic. George Anson Lord Byron was assigned the task with a Bengali tailor who had been shipwrecked on the island and
of returning the bodies to their home. Kapihe, a Hawaiian chief, was now raising a family with his Hawaiian wife.
died of the disease during the voyage back. The sad troop, in the Port duties were already a contentious issue. Prices were being
162 Early Mapping of the Pacific

leveled: enough Hawaiian chiefs had visited other countries, "nay,

some of whom have been brought up in the United States," that
the international value of what they sold and purchased was now
better known to them, "and they are naturally unwilling to trade
but upon equal grounds."
From Oahu, the Blonde sailed back to Hawaii, where equip-
ment failure marred an attempt to measure the height of Mauna
Kea. A trying ascent to the top of this highest Hawaiian mountain
was beset by problems: half the party, including the surveyor, were
separated when delayed by extreme fatigue, then took a wrong turn
and reached a summit short of the top, but separated by a ravine
which could not be passed without provisions. When the other
party, with a botanist and a missionary, reached the summit, their
theodolite (surveying instrument used for measuring horizontal
and vertical angles) had been damaged in the ascent and was
useless. Their estimate of Kea's height, 15,000 feet, was nonethe-
less better than earlier, higher figures.
Instrument malfunction also beset the mapping of Kilauea.
A party ascended this legendary home of the goddess Pele, and
a lieutenant on the mission, Charles Maiden, mapped the active
volcano for the first time (Fig. 156). A barometer was taken along
to enable the mountain's height to be computed by atmospheric
pressure at its summit. But as the barometer was not working
properly, Maiden resorted to approximating the mountain's
incline—"about two feet in a hundred"—and since "the ascent,
though gradual, is constant," he computed the height from Byron
Bay, which he placed 28 miles distant, to be 3,000 feet. This is
less than actual, but a reasonable estimate given the circumstances.
Triangulation was used to determine the circumference and depth
of the crater.
While their first night on Kilauea was characterized by "soft
fire showers that seemed to rain down upon the burning plain,"
in the middle of the second night "we were awakened by a violent
earthquake; and soon afterwards a fresh crater opened in the gulf
immediately below us, with tremendous noise, and flame, and
stones, and smoke. The plain at the bottom was overflowed with
fresh streams of lava in every direction, and a continual heaving
even of the cool dark mass, and a tremulous motion of the side
where we were, filled us with an involuntary dread...."
The lines extending to the top and left of the map are com-
pass bearings to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, respectively, though
the engraver has mistakenly labeled both as Loa, and corrupted
Maiden's compass readings. The lines converge at the party's hut,
just at the edge of the larger, westerly crater.
Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition
surveyed the Hawaiian Islands during 1840-1. He was particularly
interested in Hawaii's volcanos, and so assembled 200 Hawaiians
to guide him and his colleagues up to the top of Mauna Loa and
carry their vast array of equipment. The party left the peak in mid-
January and reached Hilo ten days later by way of Kilauea. Among
Wilkes's experts on volcanos was young James Dwight Dana, who
had gained experience in studying volcanos at Vesuvius (Naples).
It was understood that the Hawaiian islands ran progressively

Fig. 157. Manuscript map of O a h u attributed to Ursula Emerson, 1833.

[Hawaiian Historical Society]
The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 163
164 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 158. Map of the Hawaiian islands printed at the press of the missionary school in Lahainaluna, Maui, in 1837. [Library of Congress]

younger to the southeast, and Dana believed that some other resulted in an accurate longitude reading for the peak—155° 37',
Oceanic island chains were similarly arranged. Dana, whose within a few kilometers of true.
geologic interests extended to the moon, helped form ideas about Next the party mapped Kilauea. Although Kilauea is less than
the mapping of the Pacific bottom, believing that the islands' a third of the height of Mauna Loa, its active lava posed a constant
alignment was the result of volcanic activity along a fissure zone risk. One of the party was nearly lost to an unanticipated flow, and
on the ocean floor. both he and his Hawaiian rescuer received burns. Flags were again
Ancient Hawaiians had ascended Mauna Loa by the shortest, placed in key points on the crater to survey its depths. In contrast
steep trail. A member of Cook's crew, John Ledyard, ascended part to the success at Mauna Loa, longitude of Kilauea was placed at
way up the mountain in 1779, and in 1794 Archibald Menzies of 155° 28'—perplexingly far west after the Mauna Loa figure.
Vancouver's expedition reached the top (Mokuaweoweo). Wilkes's Among the people who commented on Wilkes's faulty longi-
group, the first to conduct a geologic survey, set camp at what they tude for Kilauea was W D. Alexander (Fig. 162), who later became
named Pendulum Peak in December 1840. A number of pendu- the founder of the Hawaiian Government Survey. Alexander saw
lum observations were conducted at the summit. that the error affected Wilkes's mapping of the entire southern coast
At the time it was not known which was the highest point of Hawaii, since the coast was placed in relation to the volcano.
of the archipelago—Mauna Loa, upon which he then stood, or He told James Dana that the volcano was placed eight and a half
Mauna Kea, on the same island. "It was not without some nervous minutes too far west, which was a fair assessment of the error.
excitement that I placed my instrument on the highest point of Large-scale charts of Hawaiian harbors and bays were also
Mauna Loa, within a few feet of its crater," Wilkes said, aiming it produced by the US Exploring Expedition. Along with charts of
toward Mauna Kea to the NNE, measuring that it was Mauna Kea the busiest harbors, Lahaina, Hilo, and Honolulu, Wilkes surveyed
in the distance that was slightly higher, finally establishing the Waimea, Wahiawa, and Nawiliwili on Kauai; Kaneohe on Oahu;
correct relative heights of Hawaii's volcanoes. During the course and the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Two general charts of Hawaii
of about three weeks that were devoted to the mapping of Mauna were compiled for the Expedition's atlas, though these, which
Loa, one of the surveyors descended into the crater of Mokuaweo- drew in part from the maps of Cook and Vancouver, did not
weo to measure angles and determine its depth. Wilkes's efforts always agree with Wilkes's harbor charts.
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 165

Fig. 159. Honolulu, facing northwest toward the Waianae Mountains. From Vaillant's visit in 1836-7. (Bertrand, ca. 1840).

Missionaries and the Mapping of Hawaii which religious, geographic, and mathematical texts were
While such surveying expeditions as Wilkes's were interested in produced. Andrews also saw the value of mass-producing maps,
the economic and political benefits of Pacific mapping, the newly which missionaries had thus far copied by hand. No one at the
arriving missionaries were interested in maps as a teaching tool for seminary had the expertise or the equipment for printing, however,
converted islanders. The earliest surviving maps of Hawaii created so a crude press was constructed according to an encyclopedia
by a missionary are three from 1833 of Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau. illustration, and copper used for sheathing on the ships calling at
These are attributed to Ursula Emerson (Fig. 157), and were the port below was obtained to make the engraved plates. Andrews'
apparently based on originals by J. Denison, who is cited as the resourcefulness was rewarded in November 1834 with its first
source on the map of Kauai. Little is known about Denison beyond fruit, a simple map of the world.
that he had begun a survey of the Sandwich Islands at the request Small atlases and separate maps were produced during the first
of the missionary Levi Chamberlain. few years of the project, though little is extant due to their fragility,
The most prolific missionary center of map production was heavy use, and the relatively small numbers made. A map of Hawaii
Maui. By the 1830s, the whaling town of Lahaina had become made in 1837 (Fig. 158) sufficed for student use, giving a generally
Hawaii's principal port, and thus a center for the West's prosely- accurate, if unrefined, idea of the islands. The following year, a
tizing efforts as well, particularly given the "sinful" reputation of large map of the islands on eight sheets was produced with some
the whalers. In 1831, American missionaries selected a lovely area improvements and considerably expanded nomenclature.
slightly upland from Lahaina, called Lahainaluna ("above Lah- Opinions on longitude did not remain stagnant during the
aina"), to make a high school for Hawaiians, and chose Lorrin brief time between these two maps.Their own location, Lahaina, is
Andrews, a native of Connecticut who had arrived in the islands actually a bit better placed on the rough 1837 map than the large
three years earlier, to head it. Seeing the value that mass production one. Both misplace Oahu to the west. For example, Kahuku Point
of teaching material would be for their cause, in January 1834 (northernmost Oahu), which had been mapped correctly by Van-
Andrews had a printing press built at the Lahainaluna school, from couver, is here off by about 12 kilometers. Kauai fares far worse,
166 Early Mapping of the Pacific

L A H A I N A A S S E E N FROM L A H A I N A L U N A

Fig. 160. Lahaina, as seen from Lahainaluna, with Lanai and Molokai in the distance (Dibble, 1843). George Byron, visiting Lahaina in 1824, wrote that "from the
beach to the mountain a perfectly flat plain extends from three quarters to half a mile in breadth; and this plain is richly covered with vegetation of all kinds, and studded
with trees ... the irregular patches of native culture destroy the grace of nature without giving the dignity of civilization." [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]

Fig. 161. Map of the Hawaiian islands from History of the Sandwich Islands, Sheldon Dibble, 1843, produced at the Lahainaluna School. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
 The Discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii 167

being placed fully 40 kilometers too far to the west, though Niihau, Sandwich Islands, containing a map (Fig. 161) printed by his
the channel between it and Kauai being understated, recovers some students. Given the school environment and narrow time frame
of that discrepancy. Hilo is a bit too far west on the 1837 map, but of these earliest Lahainluna maps, it is intriguing that no one model
is better placed on the large, 1838 map. Both misrepresent promi- became a set prototype. Dibble's shares some of the short-comings
nent Kahiu Point (northern Molokai) as a gentle contour. of the earlier maps, but theWaialua coast of Oahu is better formed,
Late in 1837, in between the production of these two maps, and Kahiu Point assumes a better shape. Most important-ly, the
a history teacher at the school, Sheldon Dibble, returned to his island of Nihoa, a dramatic island of towering cliffs and
native New York, his wife having died in Hawaii earlier that year. unprotected surf lying 245 kilometers to the northwest of Kauai,
He lectured extensively about the islands and the missionaries' is shown by an inset, placed with a longitudinal error only about
efforts, and in October 1839 returned to Lahainaluna with his new half that of Kauai. The island, inhabited by Polynesians in ancient
wife. Dibble, considered among the foremost of missionary figures, times, was rediscovered by William Douglas in the Iphigenia in
translated part of the Old Testament to Hawaiian, wrote textbooks March 1789 after a stop in Hawaii en route from the Northwest
for the school in Hawaiian, and was a strong force in suppressing Coast to Macao, the only discovery of his voyage.
the "sports and amusements" of which Hawaiians were so fond. Of Nihoa became better known in 1822, when Queen Kaahu-
several Hawaiian pastimes he considered dangerous, "the greatest manu, during a visit to Kauai, sent William Summer to annex it.
evil of all resulted from the constant intermingling, without any Also known as Bird Island, Nihoa's coordinates were fixed by a
restraint, of persons of both sexes and of all ages, at all times of the US survey schooner in 1859, and in the same year a US sealing
day and at all hours of the night." ship, the Gambia, discovered Midway Atoll, the last of the
In 1843, the press at Lahainaluna produced his History of the Hawaiian chain to the northeast.

Fig. 162 Large-scale lithographed map of Maui, 1885, by W. D. Alexander, founder of the Hawaiian Government Survey.
Chapter 9
The Eighteenth Century after Cook

The revolutionary advances in the mapping of the Pacific at the a number of discoveries in the Southwest Pacific in 1781 as a result
hands of Cook and those immediately preceding him gave rise to of attempting an eastward crossing along latitudes other than those
a new wave of exploratory voyages that continued the work of well proven for the purpose. Leaving Manila in late November
searching for shores to inventory, with precision being a second 1780, an inopportune time of year for the sail to Mexico via the
priority. This would change dramatically in the nineteenth century, traditional northern route, he decided to attempt a new route
when more detailed, large-scale surveys were undertaken, but for through the central and southern latitudes. This proved futile.
the time being the various major gaps left by Cook needed to be Ultimately he gave up and sailed north to catch the same winds
filled in. One of the first of those gaps to be rectified was Cook's that propelled routine Spanish crossings, but in the attempt,
failure to investigate the northern Tongan islands. Maurelle came across islands not previously known to Europeans.
The Galician navigator Don Francisco Antonio Maurelle made Most significant of these was Vava u, which James Cook had

Fig. 163. Tracks of Francisco Antonio Maurelle through the Bismarcks and Solomons, in the Atlas published with La Perouse's journal, 1797.
 The Eighteenth Century after Cook 169

learned of, but failed to investigate, fourteen years earlier during his
third voyage. On February 27, 1781, Maurelle, having woven his
way past various Melanesian islands and skimming the Solomons,
reached Tongan waters. Amicable trade with the people of Late was
followed by the discovery of "an island right ahead, on which was a
lofty mountain, appearing scorched at the summit, but exhibiting
a pleasing verdure on its sides covered with trees." They stayed for
nearly three weeks and provided a fine account of the island and its
people. The French navigator Jean-Francois Galaup de La Perouse,
while in China, obtained a manuscript detailing Maurelle's voyage,
from which the published map was made, recording Vava'u by both
its proper name and that dubbed by Maurelle, "Majorca."

La Perouse
La Perouse had sailed from Brest on August 1785 with two frigates,
the Boussole and the Astrolabe, hoping to fill in pieces of the map
left wanting by Cook. Although the expedition ended in disaster,
La Perouse had sent back his charts and logs to France when call-
ing at ports with European connections, hence many of his maps
survived (for example, Figs. 164-166). A formal atlas of his voyage
appeared in printed form in 1797 (French) and in 1798 (English),
though data from the voyage, as well as Maurelle's voyage, was
published as early as 1791 in Jean Borde's Atlas.
To facilitate coastal charting, La Perouse carried two pinnaces Fig. 165. Honshu and Hokkaido, from La Perouse's Atlas, 1797.
and a prefabricated jolly boat. As with Cook, international co-
operation was secured for the fleet's safe passage through war or
peace. Chronometers, of course, were carried—the devices had His first mapping endeavor, in February 1786, was to help
quickly become essential for any voyage—but nor were they yet erase Davis Land from maps. The existence of that coast had been
entirely reliable. La Perouse used lunar observations to check disproven several times already, to be sure, but the open expanses
the still-experimental timekeepers. If clear lunar observation of the ocean, combined with the unreliable longitude of the origi-
indicated that they were east of the position suggested by the nal sightings, made such shores fairly indelible.
chronometer, then the device was running fast; if west, slow. In April the fleet reached Easter Island and anchored in Cook's
Bay. Though their stay in Easter Island was brief, a chart of their
anchorage was made, sketches of the stone statues (Fig. 167) and
PLAN DE L ILE DE PAQUE their canoes drawn, and a perusal of the interior conducted. "The
Lece en Acril-86\ drawing of these monuments made by Mr. Hodges," the artist
a bord des fergate francaises la boufsole et Aftrotabe .
onboard the second Cook expedition, "was a very imperfect rep-
resentation of what we saw," La Perouse noted with justification.
The engraving prepared for the account of his own voyage was
romanticized as well.
The Easter Islanders, with whom the French visitors enjoyed
good relations, did their own "mapping" of the Frenchmen's
floating "island," using a cord to record the measurements of
various items. "The exactness with which they measured the ship
showed, that they had not been inattentive spectators of our arts;
they examined our cables, anchors, compass, and wheel, and they
returned the next day with a cord to take the measure over again,
which made me think, that they had had some discussions on shore
upon the subject, and that they had still doubts relative to it."
La Perouse's orders called for Tahiti to be their next port of call,
but the king had wisely given him the discretion to modify plans
as per his judgment (his orders, included in the published account,
were almost surrealistic in their magnitude and scope). As the
approaching summer was perfect for tackling his mapping assign-
ments on the Northwest Coast of America, Hawaii instead became
Fig. 164. Easter Island, from La Perouse's Atlas, 1797. the next stop. Fish habits, or fish responses to ships, were "mapped"
170 Early Mapping of the Pacific

along the way. Fish with the unmistakable harpoon wounds documents to Russian-speaking Viscount de Lesseps, who crossed
inflicted at Easter Island were sighted in Hawaii. Siberia and reached Versailles in October 1788. Here also La Pe-
They reached the Alaskan coast in the area of Mt. Elias and rouse received letters from Paris informing him of England's new
made a detailed map of Lituya Bay, which La Perouse named Port colony in New South Wales, and instructing him to investigate it.
des Francais. Here the first of the expedition's tragedies struck: In late September, sails were set for the Bauman Islands of
both pinnaces were lost while conducting soundings, at the cost Roggeveen—Samoa—which had been renamed the Navigator
of twenty-one lives. After survey work along the California coast Islands when Bougainville skimmed them two decades earlier.
and reprovisioning in Monterey, they crossed the Pacific, reaching La Perouse believed the islands to lie at 173° W of Paris, a figure
Macao, where one of the expedition's naturalists left the company he derived from the distance a Dutch chart gave between them and
and carried its charts and logs back to France. New Britain. "On the 6th of December, at three in the afternoon,
February 1787 brought the expedition to the Philippines, April we got sight of the most easterly of that Archipelago" and, wishing
to Taiwan and on north to become, in May, the first European to anchor, "passed through the channel between the great and little
vessels known to have pierced the strait between Korea and Japan islands that Bougainville left to the south." A mile distant from the
and enter the Sea of Japan (Fig. 165). The strait was surveyed as shore, latitude was placed at 14° 7 ' S, the island point 14° 8' S.
they headed north, ending up on Sakhalin, the large island north Consulting a map of the islands made on the Bougainville voyage,
of Hokkaido. The people on Sakhalin were cordial and helpful, La Perouse "found, that the island was not of the breadth indicated
and when La Perouse inquired about the geography of the region, by Bougainville's plan." Reaching Mao una, the sea broke with great
an old man sketched the opposing coasts of their land and the fury on the coral reef, but "in the creeks formed by several small
Asian mainland, placing Hokkaido to the south of Sakhalin, and— projections of the coast there was room for canoes, and probably
importantly—leaving a space between Sakhalin and the mainland, for our barges and long-boats to enter."
suggesting a strait between them. Like Roggeveen, he found glass beads to be in demand in the
La Perouse was unable to sail far enough north to prove his easternmost Samoas. There were a number of villages at the bottom
belief that Sakhalin was an island, but succeeded in discovering the of each creek, "whence came innumerable canoes, laden with hogs,
strait between it and Hokkaido, which is now named for him. In cocoa-nuts, and fruit, which we purchased with glass ware. Such
Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, he gave the expedition's accumulated great abundance increased my desire to anchor, especially as we saw

Fig. 166. The S a o a n Islands of Savai'i (Pola) and Upolu (Oyolava), from a general chart of the archipelago published in La Perouse's Atlas, 1797.
 The Eighteenth Century after Cook 171

water falling in great cascades from the tops of the mountains to The Rediscovery of the Solomon Islands
the bottoms of the villages." Brought inside a house, it "was my A key point La Perouse was en route to investigate was a theory
surprise, to see a large cabinet of lattice-work, as well executed as put forth by the French theorist Philippe Buache in his Memoir on
any of those in the environs of Paris. The best architect could not the Existence and Situation of Solomons Islands. Buache argued that
have given a more elegant curve to the extremities of the ellipses the Solomon Islands of Quiros, the whereabouts a mystery since
that terminated the building ... this charming country combines their discovery two centuries earlier, had recently been rediscovered,
the advantages of a soil fruitful without culture, and of a climate but that the rediscoverers had been unaware of it.
which renders clothing unnecessary." An encounter with the group occurred three years in a row.
Although initial relations with the Samoans were excellent, In August 1767, Carteret skimmed the Solomons on the north,
tragedy struck when a final landing was made to secure water adding Ndai, Kilinailau, and Buka to the map. In June of the
before setting sail from Tutuila. A crowd of Samoans attacked the following year, Bougainville, during his dismal voyage from Tahiti
longboats as they waited for higher tide to enable them to clear to the Moluccas, discovered the large island named for him, along
the coral. Twelve of the crew were killed and several others criti- with several others. Then Jean Francois Marie de Surville, who in
cally injured. The reason for the attack remains a mystery. A chart 1769 left India in search of a rumored isle of riches, discovered
of the unhappy bay accompanied the atlas. Terre des Arsacids, and sailed to several of the islands lying to the
To La Perouse's credit, this second disaster seemed not to southeast of Bougainville Island.
prejudice the rest of his experiences in the island group. "Maouna, Surville consulted a map of the Pacific by Vaugondy, on which
Oyolava, and Pola, (Tutuila, Upolu, Savai'i) may be numbered the Solomons are placed to the northeast of Tonga, far enough to
among the largest and most beautiful of the South Sea. The the east that he would never have suspected that his discoveries
accounts of the different navigators present no picture to the were the fabled islands. Data from the voyage were poorly dissemi-
imagination at all comparable to the beauty and immense extent nated, but once its reports could be evaluated, some geographers
of the village, to leeward of which we lay to on the north coast of identified his discoveries with those of Mendana two centuries
Oyolava. Although it was almost night when we arrived there, we earlier. Buache reasoned that the Solomon archipelago must lie
were instantly surrounded with canoes, that curiosity, or the desire between Santa Cruz on the east and New Guinea on the west, and
to traffick, had brought out of their ports. Some of them had of all the sightings of the many who had crossed those seas, only
nothing on board, and only came to enjoy the novel sight we these islands fit Quiros's evidence.
afforded them." Nor was European fascination with the islanders' While La Perouse did not live to test the theory, the man
social conventions dampened: "I am convinced, that in the Navi- sent to discover his fate did: Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni
gator Islands, at least, the young girls, before they are married, are d'Entrecasteaux, who left Brest in 1791 with two vessels, the
mistresses of their persons, and that they are not dishonored by
their complaisance," and that upon marrying "are called to no
Fig. 167. La Perouse and crew examine the great statues at Easter Island in 1786.
account concerning their past conduct."
W h e n Roggeveen discovered the island, he remarked on the people's elongated
His chart of Samoa (detail, Fig. 166) records the fleet's tracks earlobes and noted that no arms were to be seen amongst the people, who instead
in December 1787, entering Samoan waters from the east, where relied for protection on the enigmatic statues for which the island is famous.
They "trusted entirely to the assistance of their idols, erected in numbers on the
Ofu and Olosega of the Manua Islands are correctly depicted as coasts. The statues were all of stone, of the figure of a man with great ears: the
being separated by a narrow strait. Like Tutuila, the islands com- head adorned with a crown; the whole executed and proportioned according to
prising what is now the independent country of Samoa are not the rules of art, which astonished us very much. Around these idols, at twenty to
thirty paces, in a circle, there was an enclosure made of white stones." He found
surveyed on their southern coasts, and as with American Samoa, the Easter Islanders to be "in general, lively, well-made, strong, pretty slender,
the indigenous name La Perouse applied to the westerly island now and very swift of foot. Their women are covered with red and white coverlids,
designates that on the east: Oyalava is Upolu, and Pola is Savai'i. and wear a small hat made of rushes or straw. They would often sit down near
to us and undress themselves, smiling and enticing us to familiarities with them
The harbor of Pago Pago was not seen. by every sort of gestures." From La Perouse's Atlas, 1797.
La Perouse's latitudes for Samoa are near perfect, as one would
expect; longitudes are about 2 0 ' too far east (his meridian 174°
west of Paris, along the western part of Upolo, should properly be
about 174° 20')- Bougainville's estimates, done without the benefit
of the chronometer, suffered twice the error, being off by about
two-thirds of a degree.
Vava'u, the northern Tongan island discovered by Maurelle, was
La Perouse's next call, where a week was passed in friendly offshore
trading. In January 1788, the expedition reached Botany Bay as
settlers and convicts were being transported to Port Jackson. Logs
and maps compiled since the previous drop-off, in Kamchatka,
were given to an English vessel for ultimate delivery to France.
The great navigator sailed from Australia and was never heard
from again. Thirty-nine years later, Martinique-born Peter Dillon
discovered the remains of the expedition on a reef off Vanikoro. F N S U L A I R E S E T M G X U M E N S DK LULE DK P A Q U E
172 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Recherche and the Esperance. D'Entrecasteaux's head surveyor was

the young Charles Francois Beautemps-Beaupre, who would later
be regarded as the father of modern French hydrography. When
the expedition compared descriptions of the Solomons left by
Quiros with the islands seen by Bougainville and Surville, they
checked so accurately with those described by Quiros that Buache
was vindicated and the now duplicated place names discarded:
Carteret, for example, had given the name "Gower" to Santa Cruz,
having believed it to be a new discovery. After two centuries of
swimming about the Pacific, the Solomon Islands were affixed
permanently on the map.
The exercise was also of strategic value. These Melanesian
islands lay in the path of many English ships returning from New
South Wales. Three years earlier, an Englishman involved with the
settlement of convicts, John Shortland, had investigated islands in
the region of the Solomons while en route from Port Jackson back
to England via Batavia. By having sailed east from Australia to clear
that coast's dangerous reefs, he came across Middle Reef, then sailed
Fig. 168. The path of d'Entrecasteaux along western Australia in late 1792—what north, which brought him directly to the Solomons. That he ex-
unknown to him would be "year 1 of the Republic." After discovering Recherche plored and gave the name New Georgia to the group of islands just
Archipelago and Esperance Bay (the map's Bate de Legrand and lies d'Entre-
southeast of Bougainville was viewed as a possible threat to French
casteaux), low supplies forced them to continue to Tasmania, thus missing the
Bass Strait. Nicolas Piron, 1800. Opposite. Fig. 170. Manuscript chart of the precedence in the area. (Shortland's voyage was disastrous, his crew
Santa Cruz Islands, Charles Francois Beautemps-Beaupre (?), ca. 1805. plagued by scurvy. They made their way to Palau in September
1788, thence to Mindanao, by which point so many men had died
that one of their two vessels was abandoned.)
D'Entrecasteaux approached the Pacific via the Cape of Good
Hope, expecting to sail north of Australia in order to reach the
Admiralty Islands as soon as possible. The urgency was because of
a rumor circulating that the British captain John Hunter had seen
Admiralty islanders dressed in French naval uniforms, the implica-
tion being that the clothing was from La Perouse. In one of the
many stranger-than-fiction incidents that dot the history of Pacific
exploration, Hunter's and d'Entrecasteaux's paths actually crossed
at the Cape, but Hunter sailed away a couple of hours later. Had
the two captains met, Hunter would have made clear that the
rumor was false, that he never saw any such thing.
Winds made the approach north of Australia impractical, so
their course took them south of Australia. Their first major map-
ping endeavor was in Tasmania, where their markedly improved
mapping of the island's southeastern region would lead to the
establishment of HobartTown. From Tasmania, the expedition
sailed northeast to investigate the southwest coast of New Cale-
donia. When Cook had discovered this long, diagonally oriented
island on his second voyage, he had only been able to survey its
northeast coast, and the Isle of Pines, the relatively small island
separated from New Caledonia by barely 50 kilometers of coral
sea. D'Entrecasteaux approached from the Isle of Pines and sailed
along the opposite shores, thirteen days being spent filling in the
map of its long, reef-strewn southwest coast.
Fig. 169. A working draft for d'Entrecasteaux's map of the Santa Cruz Islands,
probably from the workshop of Charles Francois Beautemps-Beaupre, ca. 1805. Sails were then shifted to the Solomons. Just as New Caledonia
At the upper left is the highly active volcano of Tinakula that rises about 800 had been mapped on the northeast but not the southwest, so had
meters. Ndeni (Nendo), the large island, was the site of colonial aspirations by
Mendaiia two centuries earlier. The two elongated, parallel coasts in the lower Bougainville been mapped by Bougainville on its north and eastern
right are the single island of Utupua, whose odd shape—like two islands connect- shores only. Beautemps-Beaupre remedied that omission. When
ed by a narrow neck—could have been construed as separate islands since only Buka islanders approached the ship, d'Entrecasteaux had a resident
the northwest coasts were surveyed. The tab of paper in the lower right was
retained to include the northwest coast of Vanikoro. Some of the calculations musician play "a rather lively tune on his violin," to which the
made to plot their readings were done directly on the map and are faintly visible. islanders "laughed and jumped on the seats of their canoes."
174 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Tongan stop, the larger island of Tongatapu coming shortly after.

An observatory was set up for astronomical observations, all the
while pigs in abundance being secured at little cost, a steady supply
of trading canoes about the ships maintaining a convenient source
of food. D'Entrecasteaux had prohibited his crew from cavorting
with the Tongan women, "but the sentries not being very strict in
this point, many young girls easily evaded their notice, and were
creeping in at the port-holes every moment." The finest articles of
art purchased in Tonga were not of native manufacture, but rather
from Fiji. This was neither a secret nor a mystery; the Tongans
flaunted the objects' Fijian origins, readily acknowledging that
they were superior to anything of their own creation.
The fleet's idyllic stay on Tongatapu ended on April 10, 1793,
when they continued on to the west. Tanna in Vanuatu came into
view on the 16th, and New Caledonia, which La Perouse was
supposed to have visited, two days later. Their surveying always
combined with the search for the missing navigator, more astro-
nomical observations were conducted during their more than three
weeks' stay in New Caledonia.
A canoe with two sails arrived whose eight passengers spoke a
Polynesian language, and therefore not from New Caledonia. But
what was most unusual was that a varnished plank, clearly from a
European vessel, was integrated into the hull of the canoe. They
called their home "Aouvea" and said it lay a day's sail to the east—
one of the Loyalty group. In hindsight, one wonders if the plank
might have come from La Perouse's wrecks.
Often the mapping and exploration of the Pacific seem the
stuff of novels. Late May brought them to an island they could not
find in their charts, which they named He de Recherche. Had they
mapped this island as thoroughly as they had many others, they
would have found the object of their quest, for they had discovered
Fig. 171. Santa Cruz Islands, from Bruny-Dentrecasteaux, Atlas de Voyage, 1807. Vanikoro, the island with the carcasses of La Perouse's vessels. One
The chart covers the area from the little island of Tinakula in the upper left, can only wonder if the two or more crew who are known to have
through Tupua and Naunonga on the lower right. The date in the title, which
refers to the time of the survey, is marked as "year 1" of the Revolution (1792-3).
survived on the island for some years, sighted the vessel sent to
rescue them. But the reconnaissance was superficial (see Figs. 169-
171). No anchorage was found, and sails were set for the Solomons
Sailing then to the northwest, on July 17 they reached about 500 kilometers to the west.
Dampier's New Ireland, where the expedition's naturalists were After an unfriendly encounter in San Cristobal, the expedition
fascinated by a species of spider that constructed a defense against continued west and sailed along the southern coast of Guadal-
the incessant rains, and on July 26 they reached the Admiralty canal, then on to the Louisiade Archipelago. Now sailing north,
Islands, visited by Carteret twenty-five years earlier, where the two archipelagos were discovered just north of the easternmost tip
intensity of the search for islanders in French costume yielded of New Guinea: a mountainous group being named for d'Entre-
an equally meticulous mapping of the islands' coasts. casteaux, and a low-lying group, later to become the focus of
Discouraged at their failure to find any trace of La Perouse, research by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, for Denis
they sailed west to the north of New Guinea and anchored among deTrobriand, senior lieutenant of the Esperance.
eighteen Dutch ships in the Indonesian island of Amboina, resting From here on, the expedition experienced a succession of
and reprovisioning for five weeks. From Amboina, the fleet sailed hardships: ill-health, the death of d'Entrecasteaux among others,
south along the western Australian coast, making some new dis- the seizure of both their ships in Batavia in payment for debts
coveries in the southwest (Fig. 168). Approaching Tasmania for incurred, and internal squabbling between those crew siding with
the second time, d'Entrecasteaux suspected that a strait separated it the Royalists and Revolutionists in France, this subtle class warfare
from Australia, probably influencing the English explorers Bass and the unfortunate "baggage" of France's political and social discon-
Flinders, who finally proved Tasmania to be an island in 1798. tent. To make matters even worse, both Holland and England
Whereas d'Entrecasteaux had veered north from eastern Aus- were now at war with France, leaving d'Entrecasteaux's company
tralia the first time, he now continued east, skirting New Zealand, "enemies" of the only two European nations present in the region.
then set his sights northeast for Tonga. A couple of minor discov- The voyage had failed in its primary goal of finding La Perouse,
eries were made in the Kermadec Islands en route. 'Eua was the first but the wild search had contributed greatly to the mapping of the
 The Eighteenth Century after Cook 175

THE M S ILKS DK 5/AM1RAUTE.

/trynmr* Mn /htrt i'sf/t Jt*y*if

Fig. 172. The Admiralty Islands, as seen in 1793 by the d'Entrecasteaux expedition. Drawn by Nicolas Piron. (Paris, 1800). [Antipodean Books, Maps and Prints]

southwest Pacific. The formidable cartographic fruits of the voyage or three years before publication of the printed chart in Fig. 171.
were finally published in 1807 as the Atlas du Voyage de Bruny- The final, printed product places Vanikoro {ILe de Recherche,
Dentrecasteaux, with 39 charts, including one of the Santa Cruz unnamed on the manuscripts) in an inset for more efficient utiliz-
group with an inset of Vanikoro (Fig. 171). ation of space on the sheet. The year of exploration is marked by
Figs. 169 and 170 are working drafts on which readings were both the Christian and Revolutionary calendars, while the year of
marked and their course plotted, Fig. 170 perhaps being a trial for publication, 1807, is by the Christian calendar only.
the printed chart. All three charts depict the same islands: from the
upper left to the lower right, they are Tinakula, the small active William Bligh
volcanic island which had provided such a spectacle to Mendana William Bligh, though best remembered for the Bounty mutiny,
two centuries earlier; Ndeni (Nendo), Quiros's Santa Cruz, largest was a master navigator and surveyor. Some of the fine mapping
of the group; Utupua, whose unusual shape made it appear as two done on Cook's third voyage was the fruit of Bligh's expertise.
islands, and Vanikoro, the island where La Perouse's wreck, un- But if the mutiny of the Bounty crew was his greatest failure, the
known to d'Entrecasteaux, lay. Each chart encompasses about aftermath was his greatest triumph.
200 kilometers of ocean, from Tinakula through Vanikoro. Bligh's command of the Bounty to the Pacific, which left Eng-
Fig. 169 is the earlier of the two manuscript drafts. It marks land at the end of 1787, was the first to draw upon the recent series
only the coasts actually surveyed, so that Vanikoro (protruding tab of scientific expeditions for a commercial venture. British planta-
on the lower right) and the two halves of Utupua are mapped only tions in the West Indies were in need of a cheap food supply for
on their northwest shores. The results of astronomical observations their laborers; breadfruit, so plentiful in Tahiti, might be trans-
are recorded on the draft, and some calculations are visible in planted there. The Pacific was approached via Cape Horn, but
pencil. In the chart in Fig. 170, the unknown southeastern coasts terrible weather made Bligh eventually about face and head to
of Utupua (shown as two close islands) and Vanikoro are filled in the Cape of Good Hope instead. Islands discovered en route from
hypothetically, and part of the tracks of the Recherchefrom May New Zealand to Tahiti were named after his ship.
1793 are marked in red pen. A trial title was prepared on a separ-ate On April 4, 1789, after twenty-three weeks on Tahiti gathering
slip of paper and pasted on the map. This title is dated by the breadfruit, the Bounty sailed. "I had little reason to expect making
Revolutionary calendar, year XIII, which would be 1804-5, two any new discovery," Bligh wrote, "as my Track, altho not traversed
176 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 173. Map of Oceania by Franz Joh. Jos. von Reilly, 1795, based on a 1780
map of Daniel Djurberg. Djurberg initiated a short-lived trend of designating
Australia as "Ulimaroa." T h e origin of the term lies in Hawkesworth's account
of Cook's first voyage. While in New Zealand, Maoris told Cook of visitors who
had come in a "small vessel" from a place to the north called Ulimaroa. Although
Cook's friend, the Tahitian navigator Tupaia, translated and thought he also knew
of the place, the information was ambiguous and Cook "could draw no conclu-
sion." But Djurberg did make a conclusion—and surely a wrong one—taking
their homeland to be Australia and the term to be its indigenous name.

by any one before, yet was bordering so near on others, that I

scarce thought it probable to meet with any land." But at daylight
a week into their voyage, about 1100 kilometers W S W of Papeete,
Aitutaki, northernmost of the Cook Islands, was discovered.
The Bounty continued to Niue and northern Tonga before
the famous mutiny led by Fletcher Christian. Surveys Bligh had
made during the outward voyage were lost in the mutiny, but he
continued drawing charts of the isles they passed. Several previously
unknown islands were discovered in the Fiji group, among them
Viti Levu and the Yasawa group (see Bligh's tracks on Fig. 200),
and then new islands in northern Vanuatu: Mota, Saddle, and
the Reef group. Bligh's successful bringing of an overcrowded, ill-
equipped launch across 7200 kilometers of open ocean to Timor
was an extraordinary feat of seamanship.
The voyage sent to incarcerate Bligh's mutineers, under the
uninspired Edward Edwards in the Pandora, also discovered one of
the Fijis. Sailing west after capturing mutineers who had remained
on Tahiti—whom were incarcerated in an onboard cage dubbed
"Pandora's Box"—they came across an unknown island with "a vast
number of houses amongst the trees." Its mountains "are cultivated
to the top; the reason of which, I presume, is from its being so full
of inhabitants ... we called it Greenville's Island.... The name the
natives give it is Rotumah," Rotuma in the far north of the Fijis.
Continuing home, Edwards saw smoke rising from an island he
called Pitts, which was, in fact, Vanikoro. Had he investigated the
island, he might have found the wreck of La Perouse's ships and
two or more living crew. Soon afterwards, the Pandora was wrecked
on the Great Barrier Reef, the survivors then making for Timor in
four boats, in an ironic echo of Bligh's saga. The irony continued
in Timor, where authorities in Koepang handed over to them
eleven convicts, including two children, who had escaped Port
Jackson in a six-oared cutter.
Three years later, Bligh was back in Tahiti for breadfruit. On
his return, he revisited the discoveries he had made in the launch,
and tried to clarify confusion over the mapping of the Tongan
island of Vava'u. He qualified the mapping done by the island's
European discoverer, Maurelle. "The relative positions and lati-
tudes agree very nearly" with his own, Bligh found, "and the longi-
tude is out of the question. [Maurelle] has been exact in which it is
unpardonable in a navigator to neglect. I mean his latitude." Bligh
then sailed through the central part of Fiji, recording twenty-two
islands. Ngau was the crew's favorite; they waxed lyrical about the
beauty of the island itself and the way its people had cultivated it.
With the end of the eighteenth century came the end of the
major inventorying of Pacific Islands. The dawn of the next century
brought more meticulous mapping of now familiar shores. As if study the newly rich Pacific on such maps as that illustrated above
aware of the changing focus, some mapmakers produced encyclo- (Fig. 173), one of several variations of a map by Daniel Djurberg.
pedic compendiums of known islands. General audiences could Academics and pilots needing more detailed and up-to-date data
 The Eighteenth Century after Cook 177

usually turned to a much larger chart by the London cartographer friends as Otto von Kotzebue. The Pacific kept a few surprises for
Aaron Arrowsmith. First published in 1798, the map was zealously coming pilots and mapmakers, but most of the remaining work
updated as new information became available, including from such would be mapping known shores in greater detail and precision.
Chapter 10
Micronesia, the Elusive Isles

Although the Micronesian islands were among the first shores ascertained a latitude where advantageous winds would be found,
encountered by Spanish expeditions in the early and mid-sixteenth most subsequent voyages thus plying similar latitudes.
century, they were the last to be explored and charted. They were The second step in the mapping of Micronesia began after a
also the most difficult to identify with subsequent encounters, century-long hiatus. It spanned the latter seventeenth through the
owing to their being small islands scattered with no reliable refer- mid-eighteenth century, during early attempts to establish missions
ence points. There is no wide agreement on the identity of most on the islands. Except for the Marianas, almost all of the carto-
early European landfalls in Micronesia. graphic information of this period was gathered from indigenous
Like Polynesians, the peoples of Micronesia effected powerful sources. This islander data was circulated and interpreted in various
images of both virtue and wickedness in the minds of Europeans. forms through the early nineteenth century.
The Portuguese chronicler Barros endowed them with a Biblical Only the final stage was of methodical first-hand exploration.
goodness in relating the then recent news that Dioga da Rocha This began quite late and inadvertently, in 1783, with a British
was blown off course during a voyage from Ternate to Celebes in shipwreck. Although the incident itself changed little in the pre-
1525. Reaching an island to which they gave the name of their vailing map of the region, it had a watershed effect on Europe's
pilot, Gomez de Sequeira (perhaps Ulithi), Barros noted that "the interest in the islands. The American Revolution also helped spur
people of the island are of simple rationality, without any malice, exploration of Micronesia because the closing of the United States
fear, or cautiousness ... it seemed to them that they were amidst as a depot for British convicts led to the establishment of New
the simplicity of the First Age." South Wales, and return voyages from the penal colony pierced
Two centuries ago, Amasa Delano, a native of Massachusetts the Kiribati and the Marshalls. Thus it was not until well after
and veteran of the American Revolution, wrote in amazement the three voyages of James Cook had demystified Polynesia and
of the Palauans sense of ethics in war: AbbaThulle, the king, Melanesia that serious mapping of Micronesia began, culminat-
explained that "unfair" tactics such as a surprise attack while an ing with the detailed surveys of the nineteenth century.
adversary slept would never be done, and was disappointed to The first printed map to substantively record Micronesia was
learn that Europeans considered this acceptable among civilized included in the second edition of the first volume of G. B. Ram-
nations. War, AbbaThulle said, "was horrid enough when pursued usios Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, 1554, and attributed to the
in the most open and magnanimous manner," and "regular and eminent Italian cosmographer Giacomo Gastaldi (Fig. 174). The
open warfare might be the means of a peace without barbarity." Ramusio map, as well as the Ortelius Maris Pacifici (Fig. 58) and
Yet, earlier in the same century, Spanish sources deemed the the map of the western Pacific of Petrus Plancius (Fig. 175), all
Palauans as so cruel and sinful that the islands were avoided. offer interesting early records of the first wave of Iberian discoveries
The European mapping of Micronesia can be envisioned in in Micronesia. They are similar in neither coverage nor sources.
three stages. The first, covering the period 1521 through roughly First among the post-Magellan discoveries is seen on the
the end of that century, resulted from incidental encounters during Plancius map, just above the smaller ship in the left center: I. de S:
trans-Pacific voyages. Most of these discoveries occurred in the Ioannes, island of St. John, probably Sonsorol. When Magellan's
course of the early, unsuccessful attempts at an eastward return Victoria sailed west from the Moluccas on its circumnavigation of
before the winds facilitating such a crossing were known. Many the globe, Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa took the expedition's other
of the islands sighted during this period would prove to be the remaining vessel, the Trinidad, north and east in an attempt to
most enduring of unidentifiable specks on maps, some remaining return to Panama. Searching for westerly winds, on May 6, 1522
in otherwise empty seas into the twentieth century. The haphazard they "made two small islands, which could be in about 5 degrees
discoveries resulting from the quest for a route east across the more or less, to which they gave them the name of the islands
Pacific effectively ended in 1565, when Andres de Urdaneta of San Juan." San Juan appeared on Portuguese charts before it
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 179

TAVOrA'

Fig. 174. The western Pacific by Giacomo Gastaldi, published in G. B. Ramusio's Delle Navigations 1554 (1563). South is at the top, and the heavy horizontal line
toward the top is the equator. Straddling and above the equator lie the various islands of Indonesia, from Sumatra on the right through Gilolo (Halmahera) on the left.
Below (north of) the equator and to the left (east) of the center vertical line lie the Philippines, in the lower left is Japan (Cympagu), and in the left center, Micronesia.

appeared on the charts of Magellan's sponsor state, Spain, because described the Marianas as a north-south aligned chain of thirteen
Espinosa, failing to find the necessary westerly winds for the east- islands which extends through 21° north latitude—that latitude
ward crossing, returned to the Moluccas, where Portuguese auth- is about correct for Farallon de Pajaros in the extreme north of the
orities confiscated his maps and log. In about 1575, longitude group, if coincidentally so. Ramusio plots the chain with the exact
uncertainty, and perhaps confusion of its name with that of the thirteen islands reported, but does not extend them to 21°.
little Philippines island of Siargao, led the Spanish mapmaker Juan Next we find the fruits of the voyage of Alvaro de Saavedra,
Lopez de Velasco to transpose San Juan to the northeast corner whose name in various corrupted forms is even used to denote a
of Mindanao, where it remained into the eighteenth century. Pacific island (an easily recognizable example being the island of
Near the left border of the Ramusio map are the Marianas Saia vedra on the Hondius map in Fig. 61, to the right of the rose
{Li Ladroni), which were depicted so primitively by Munster in compass). In 1527, Saavedra sailed from Mexico across the Pacific,
1540 (Fig. 43), now forming a recognizable north-south chain. reaching Guam, Mindanao, Tidore, and Halmahera, then attempt-
Obviously these are no longer based on Magellan, who only made ed to locate westerly winds, sailing to 14° N, then penetrating to
the southernmost of the group. Better sources came quickly: 31°. Early one morning in 1528, "with the sun already up, we saw
Espinosa had revisited them in the Trinidad during his attempted land when we were about one league from it. This land was bap-
eastward crossing, and while there a cabin boy, Goncalo de Vigo, tized by Captain Alvaro de Saavedra the islands of Los Reyes [the
deserted. De Vigo spent four years in the Marianas, befriending kings], because on the day we saw them it was the feast of the Kings
the Chamorros, learning their language, and amassing knowledge [the Epiphany]." Hence the genesis of the little archipelago seen on
about the archipelago. After he was picked up in 1526 by the ex- these maps, which represents one of the Caroline Islands, perhaps
plorer Garcia de Loaisa, his reports were obtained by the Spanish Ulithi. They are most prominently depicted on the Ramusio map,
historian Oviedo, who published them in his Historia. De Vigo the Iso Ie del Rey on the far left just above middle.
180 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 175. Culminating sixteenth-century printed maps of the Pacific was this 1594 work of Petrus Plancius, a strong advocate of Dutch strength in the western Pacific
and a force in the creation of the Dutch East India Company. Reflecting a common misunderstanding, western New Guinea and the island of Seram are combined as a
single island. The map is based on charts by the Portuguese mapmaker Bartolomeu de Lasso which had been smuggled out of Lisbon. J. Visscher, 1617. [Paulus Swaen]

To discover two other islands on these maps, we follow one of Ramusio (Giardin) and Ortelius (LosIardinos). But Plancius adds
Saavedras crew, Antonio Corso, and jump ahead thirteen years, to the disparaging words "al la Desaprovechada" to the term, meaning
1542, when he returned to the Pacific as a pilot under Ruy Lopez that these were "garden islands of no merit," the change being
de Villalobos. A six-vessel fleet left from the Mexican port of adopted by later maps (for example, Hondius, Fig. 67). The Gar-
Navidad (visible on the Maris Pacifici directly below the Tropic of den Isles are among those cavalierly associated by later geographers
Cancer), carrying with it charts from Saavedras voyage. Heading with Hawaii, and remained on some maps into the twentieth
west into the Pacific, they discovered Santo Tome, La Nublada, and century, shoved into the anonymity of the northern Pacific waters.
Roca partida, which became among the most mapped of Pacific On January 21, 1543, at 10° N latitude, Villalobos "passed
islands. They already appear on Ramusio's 1556 map of America, by a small island, well populated, which appeared very beautiful."
are prominent on the Maris Pacifici (just below Baja California), Although small, the island was high, with black rocks, fresh-
and are still seen on many maps into the mid-nineteenth century. looking and with beautiful palm trees. "We did not anchor here.
The day after Christmas, the feast day of San Esteban, Villa- Rather, Indians came out with proas making the sign of the Cross
lobos discovered a group of islands and in typical fashion named it with their hands and they were heard to say in Spanish: 'Buenos
after the day's saint. However, the islands boasted such beautiful dias, matalotes', reason for which we baptized it Matalotes"
coral (one choice specimen of which was said to have come up (matalote, in Spanish and Portuguese, denotes a "sailor", in par-
with the anchor) that the crew soon forgot the saint and renamed ticular one who is rough and unskilled). Augustinian priests
it after the natural wonder. Ramusio, Ortelius, and Plancius all aboard wished to name the island after St. Ildefonso, but the crew,
record the island, in different places. Ramusio's is the most struck by the islanders' inexplicably having (supposedly) greeted
prominent; his Corali iso Ie is just below the Iso Ie delRey. them in their tongue, dubbed it Matalotes. Ramusio took this to
A week later, Villalobos encountered a group often or more be a particularly large island.
islands which, "as they seemed green and beautiful," Juan Gaytan Another island with a curious christening lies just above the left
wrote, "we gave them the name of//' Giardinif mapped thus by galleon on the Ramusio map: Apri locchio, literally, "open the eyes."
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 181

This appears to have been a standard cautionary phrase, as it can JPaa.2

be found in different seas on several early charts, though the origin
of this particular Micronesian island is not known. Our "open the
eyes' island soon took on a life of its own when its spelling was
corrupted beyond recognition by subsequent mapmakers or en-
gravers. Published maps were particularly influential; Herreras
1601 map of the Pacific, based on the Lopez de Velasco chart of
1575, corrupts it to abeio, others in turn parroting the strange
name, its origin now invisible to them.
The Plancius identifies an island (directly above the fish above
New Guinea) with a similar term, but which cannot be from the
same encounter: Miracomo Vaz {mira como vas, meaning "watch
where you're going"). This comes from the Legazpi expedition's
discovery of reefs near Chuuk in the Carolines in 1565: "At day-
break, we tacked back to see if we could see the reef, or island, but
we could not... it is in 8 degrees. The pilot baptized it Mira como
vas because that is what those passing here should do." Arellano
entered within the reef, and was invited by the islanders to enter
an inlet by an island called Tonowas, but problematic winds and
fear of the islanders kept them away.
Bernardo de la Torre, a member of Villalobos's expedition,
added four long-lived archipelagos to the Pacific map while
attempting to find an eastward route across the Pacific in 1543.
"They had sight of certain islands," the English chronicler Hakluyt
related of September 25, "which they named Malabrigos (that is
to say, The Evil Roads). Beyond them they discovered Las dos
Hermanas (that is, The Two Sisters). And beyond them also they
saw 4 islands more, which they called Los Volcanes." On October
2, they "had sight of Farfana, beyond which there stands a high
pointed rock, which casts out fire at 5 places." "Farfana" is from
the Spanish Huerfana (orphan). As with most early Micronesian
discoveries, these are found in various places and spellings; the
disparity is seen on the Ortelius and Plancius maps.
Before "islands of thieves," Magellan had originally dubbed
the Marianas Islas de las Velas Latinas, "islands of the Lateen Sails,"
in honor of the Chamorros's lateen (triangular) sailed canoes.
Plancius uses this earlier designation, omitting, as became

Fig. 176. The Mariana Islands from Ie Gobien, Histoire des Isles Marianes,
1700. "Before the Spaniards appeared in these islands," the volume relates, "the
inhabitants lived in complete freedom. They had no laws except those that each
individual imposed upon himself. Separated from all nations by the vast seas that
surround them, and enclosed in their islands, as in a small world, they completely
ignored the fact that there were other lands, and they considered themselves to the
only men in the universe." Pigafetta had made the same comment about the
Chamorros when he reached the Marianas on the Magellan voyage in 1521.
Le Gobien claimed that the Chamarros often live to be 100 years of age, "yet
they were so strong and healthy that they seemed to be fifty." He wrote at length
about the matriarchal nature of their society, describing the abuses that husbands
often endure at the hands of angry wives and their families. "This dominion of
women over men," he observed, has caused many young men not to marry, but
instead to "hire girls, or buy them from their parents for some bits of iron or
tortoise shells," living with them "in public houses." Fire, he claimed, had been
barely known to the Chamarros before Magellan used it to destroy a village, and at
first "they regarded fire as some species of animal which attached itself to wood in
order to nourish itself." For all the faults of Chamorro society cited by Ie Gobien,
theft, the attribute for which the islands had been best known to Europeans, was
not one. "These islanders have horror of homicide and theft. Thus one does them
an injustice in calling their land las islas de los ladrones. Far from being robbers,
they trust one another, and never close their homes. They leave them open always,
without anyone robbing his neighbor." [Helen Kahn]
182 Early Mapping of the Pacific

common, "lateen." Midway between the fish above New Guinea, according to what I have been informed by these Indians there are
and the right ship, lies De los dos Vesinos ("of the two neighbors, or over twenty islands," whose people all speak the same language.
residents") discovered by Arellano of the Legazpi voyage in 1565. But not until a century later did any such transmission affect the
There they found no people "except two who were fishermen who published cartographic record. The "Volcano Island" normally
had come from outside to fish at those islands." Next, Arellano denoted Asuncion (third place name from the top on Fig. 176),
discovered "Island of the swimmers" (I: de los Nadadores, just be- though at the time of conquest, the Chamorros referred to all the
low dos Vesinos) "because [the people of the island] came aboard by islands north of Saipan as the "volcano" (gam) islands.
swimming when we were over one league from the island ... they In 1662, the Jesuit Diego Luis de Sanvftores visited Guam
would make the best possible rowers for a galley, according to the on his way to Manila and became infected with a desire to bring
tall and well-built bodies they had." To the north on Plancius's Christianity to the Chamorros. Unsuccessful in his attempts to
map is I: de Paxaros, the "island of birds," which "was so small," establish a mission in the archipelago through his superiors in
according to' Legazpi's pilot Esteban Rodriguez, "that we think it Manila, his case was taken to Madrid, Rome, and ultimately
was uninhabited ... the whole island was full of birds and for this conveyed to King Philip IV and Mariana of Austria. In 1667, he
reason we named it Isla de Pajaros." was granted permission and funds for a mission in the Ladrones.
Another island Plancius records after Legazpi is Barbudos (just When Philip died three months later, and Mariana became queen-
east of Paxaros), one of the Marshall Islands. "There were about regent, Sanvftores proposed renaming the archipelago after her,
100 Indians at this island," the pilot Esteban Rodriguez explained and thus they are today known as the Marianas.
in his log book, "comely with beards; for this reason, we named Maps of the archipelago (Fig. 176) and of Guam (Fig. 177)
this island Los Barbudos ["the Bearded Ones"]. It is in 10 degrees were made in 1671 by Father Alonso Lopez, a local missionary,
and 1/4," though Plancius places it further south. and published in 1700 by Father Charles Ie Gobien. "In order to
Ironically, whereas these ambiguous discoveries were widely know the size and location of these islands," Ie Gobien wrote, "one
mapped, an important, identifiable discovery made at the end of should not refer to maps, for the names and exact locations have
the century was not: Pohnpei. It was almost certainly this largest been learned only in the past few years." Although his Archipelde
member of the eastern Carolines that Pedro Fernandez de Quiros St. Lazarewzs certainly the best published rendering of the Mari-
discovered in the course of his desperate flight to Manila on anas to date, he seems to have worked from separate originals for
Mendanas second expedition, after having failed to locate the
Solomons. On December 23, 1595, in six degrees north latitude,
"they got sight of an island, towards which they steered, intending
to seek there a port and provisions." The island was inhabited,
"almost round," and was so well protected by rocks and reefs that
they were unable to land despite their dying crew and ship, though
they almost ran aground. This description, along with their obser-
vation that "at three leagues to the west, they saw four low islands,
and many others close to it, all surrounded with reefs," safely
clinches the identity of this island as Pohnpei, which was later
given the name "Quirosa" or just labeled as the island discovered
by Quiros. Pohnpei can be found as an ambiguous speck on official
Spanish charts, such as those by Teixeira in Fig. 66 (extreme upper
left) and 75 (above the word "Equinocial"), but the important
discovery had no influence on published maps.
European knowledge of Micronesia then effectively stagnated
for more than a century. Even into the early 1700s, the data accum-
ulated during this earliest phase remained the complete Micro-
nesian repertoire of many geographers.

Missionaries Question Islanders to Construct Maps

The next epic in the cartography of Micronesia was that of mission-
aries in search of pagan souls, and except for the Marianas, that
data was principally Pacific Islander data, reconstructed by Jesuits
into the Europeans' map "language."
Some scattered such reports were collected during the early
years of the seventeenth century. For example, when Fray Juan
Pobre, in Rota in 1602, asked a fellow Spaniard about the islands,
he was told that "there are many such islands. Besides those shown
on the navigation chart which are only the seven or eight... there
are many more in the direction of the Volcano [Island], so that Fig. 177. Guam, from Ie Gobien, 1700. [Helen Kahn]
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 183

Fig. 178. Village in Palau, from George Keate's 1788 account of the voyage and shipwreck of Henry Wilson's Antelope. [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints]

each island without sufficient data as to orientation or distance. He In December 1696, castaways from Fais, in the Carolines, were
achieves the general shapes of the islands with reasonable success driven onto the Philippine island of Samar, into the care of Spanish
but many are oriented wrongly, such as Rota, which he aligns N - S missionaries. Two women who had previously been beached on
rather than NE-SW, and Saipan, which is reversed, N W - S E in- the Philippines were able to serve as interpreters, and when a
stead of the correct NE-SW. Although he knew that certain islands Father Paul Klein visited Samar shortly afterwards, he met with
formed close groupings—such as Saipan, Tinian, and Aguijan— these "twenty nine Palaos, or inhabitants of certain new-discover'd
distances between islands are generally poor, even among those Islands." Upon questioning them, the Jesuits learned that they had
better known. For example, Rota is too far south and Guam too sailed for "one of the Neighboring Islands; when there arose a very
far north, roughly halving the true distance between them. strong Wind, that forced them out into the main Sea, so that they
Until the nineteenth century, the mapping of the Marianas could not gain the island they design'd for ... they were driven be-
was mostly the work of Spanish mariners, though other Europeans fore the wind for seventy days [until] they resolved to give them-
occasionally visited the islands. George Robertson of Wallis's expe- selves up to the Mercy of the Winds," which soon brought them to
dition, for example, tried to observe the moons of Jupiter to fix the Samar. "They relate that their country consists of two and thirty
longitude of Tinian while anchored there in 1767, but the planet's Islands; which cannot be far distant from the Marianas, as may be
proximity to the sun at that time foiled the effort. judged by the Make and Smallness of their Vessels, and Form of
The northern Marianas remained poorly charted for many their Sails, which are very like those of the Marianas."
years. When the Massachusetts captain, Amasa Delano, passed The missionaries deduced that their islands must lie eleven or
Pagan (500 kilometers north of Guam) and neighboring islands in twelve degrees north latitude, "under the same degree latitude as
1802, he had "a good set of sights on each side of the moon" to fix Guivam [Guiuan, southern Samar, Philippines]; for sailing directly
longitude. Yet he could not identify them, "as these islands are laid from East to West, they came ashore at this town." The Carolinians
down very erroneously in the best charts that we have." tried to explain the names and locations of their islands to the
184 Early Mapping of the Pacific

L#

Fig. 179. Caroline Islands, Father Paul Klein, 1696 (1705). Constructed from the reports of Carolinians whose vessel was washed ashore in the Philippines.

Spanish on Samar, and in 1696 the result of this exchange was Thus, the number within each island indicates the island's size
published by Father Klein. The map, which referred to the islands measured in the number of days it takes to circumnavigate, and
as the "new Philippines," appeared in Spanish in 1696, French in the number between islands indicates the distance between islands,
1705 (Fig. 179) and later copies by the publisher Bellin, and Eng- likewise recorded in units of sea-borne days. The principal island
lish in the Philosophical Transactions of 1721. The latter explained was said to be Lamurrec, "It is there that the King of the Country
that " [This] map was not made by Europeans, for none have yet keeps his Court." The map covers the area from Panlog (Paiau) and
been upon these islands, but by the islanders themselves, after this Yap on the west, through Chuuk on the east, one of the Chuuk
manner. Some of the most skilful of them arranged upon a table as islands being represented by the island marked Torres. Adding to
many little stones as there are islands belonging to their country; the difficulty in constructing the map was the fact that many of
and marked out, as well as they could, the name of each, its extent the islands mentioned by the Carolinians were islets within atolls,
and distance from the others: And this is the map, thus traced out while Klein mapped each as an independent island.
by the Indians, that is here engraved." Klein's letter of June 1697 explained the source of map: "The
The Philosophical Transactions explained that the numbers Geographic Map of these Islands showed 87 of them, with various
placed in, and between, islands are travel times as related by the sizes, that were described by the above-mentioned Indians, who
islanders: "The figure in the midst of every island, shows how many pointed them out with their names as shown on said Map. And, to
days sail it is in circumference. The figure between each island, explain the differences in the relative size of the islands they used
shows how many days are required to pass from one to the other." stones, some small and some bigger, placed upon the ground, in
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 185

JU

Fig. 180. The Caroline Islands, Joseph Stocklein, 1726. Stocklein tried to interpret more accurately the indigenous data of the Klein map (Fig. 179).

accordance with the position which they conceived said islands various questions, suggested by his own holy zeal, which in sub-
to occupy in the sea. Although it is a fact that, before a rigorous stance were about their location, size, number, and condition of
examination of the knowledge they have of the Islands was tested, their inhabitants, vicinity with the Philippines."
they had only named 32, however, after they had a chance to review Jesuits' conversion of the islanders' time-based distance into
their memory they named and pointed out as many as 87 islands, European linear distance was subject to wide interpretation. A map
and they testified to have been, and seen all said Islands. And they in Father Joseph Stocklein's Der Neue Welt-Bott(l726, Fig. 180)
added that there existed many more Islands, but that since they depicts essentially the same information as the Klein map, but
had not visited them, they did not retain them." adjusted for east-west breadth and island size to better reflect the
Thus, a vessel leaving from the eastern tip of Samar (Philip- islanders' figures. For example, the Klein map marks " 1 " inside
pines), where the islanders were questioned, would sail for three Olotup (Ulithi, immediately east of Yap), meaning that the island's
days to reach Palau (island A, Panlog), and to circumnavigate Palau circumference is a one-day sail, yet it is virtually the same size as
would take thirty days. "The Island that is marked with the letter Yap, which is marked as a five-day circumference. Stocklein inserts
B (Paiz, probably Fais), Klein explains, "is the home island of these northwestern New Guinea (Terra dos Papous), which was lacking
Indians. The Island from which they departed, when they got lost, on the Klein map, and records the tracks of Francisco Padilla, the
and were pushed off by the wind, when they tried to return home, would-be first military governor of the Carolines, on his voyage
is marked with the letter C [Amorsot, probably Lamotrek]. The of late 1710 through early 1711.
Island where the King lives [marked with the letter D] has two Juan Antonio Cantova was in Guam in 1721 when two way-
names, and those are: Falu or Lamurec." Falu (or "Palu," the "f" ward canoes from the Caroline Islands reached its shores. Hoping
and "p" being interchangeable) was probably a misunderstanding, to remedy the Church's failure at proselytizing in those mysterious
as it means "navigator" in the Carolinian language. islands, he constructed a map (Fig. 181) based on whatever he
Maps served as tangible evidence of pagan souls and benefited could glean from the canoe's navigators. The map, which intro-
the Jesuits' goal of patronage for missions. The Supreme Pontiff, duces his appellation "Carolines," extends from Palau and Yap on
Clement XI, was brought "a beautiful Map, with a description of the west through Chuuk on the east. Most easily recognized is Yap,
the new Islands recently named, and many more that afterwards the upper left circle, and Palau, the lower left circle. Continuing to
the Indians from there added after more interrogation.... Picking the east is Ulithi, the archipelago named Egoi and marked by the
up the Map, or Geographic Chart, with his own hands, he asked large ellipse. Lamurrec-Ulee, in the large circle just right of center,
186 Early Mapping of the Pacific

encompasses the various islands of the Lamotrek-Woleai region. loss of her livestock. But on the night of August 10, only a day after
The islands of Chuuk, contained within the large /. Provinz calm returned, a violent thunderstorm hit and the Antelope struck a
Narnens Cittac, is the easternmost archipelago marked. These reef near Ulong, one of several small islands running SSW from the
reconstructions of indigenous geographic data remained the best main island of Babeldaob. The crew sat out the black night on the
that was known of the Carolines for many years. crippled vessel, their hopes pinned on two sailors' belief that "in
While Spanish missionaries eyed western Micronesia, the is- the momentary interval of a dreadful flash of lightening," they had
lands were being flaunted about on other stages. In 1775, a sultan seen "the appearance of land ahead of the ship." The light of dawn
on the southernmost Philippine island of Mindanao offered King confirmed that they lay three or four leagues from one small island,
George III territory on "any Island wherever they may choose to with three of four more visible.
settle in my Country," believing that the English wanted only to Crew and salvaged supplies were ferried to the nearest island,
trade, and would provide protection from the proselytizing Spanish which was uninhabited. When native canoes came to investigate
and the meddlesome Dutch. But by "his" country he included the strangers' presence, among them was a Malay sailor, himself
"Yap; Islands not yet properly discovered and known. I will give shipwrecked about ten months earlier. As one of the Antelopes
any of those Islands to the [East India] Company." crew spoke Malay, and the Malay sailor also spoke some English
and Dutch, in addition to having learned the Palauan language,
The Methodical Mapping of Micronesia communication with the islanders was established.
The "modern" mapping of the islands begins not with a planned Over the next three months, King Ibedul graciously accom-
voyage of exploration or proselytizing, but rather with a shipwreck modated his guests as they built a new vessel with which to return
at Palau during an otherwise routine commercial trip. O n July 20, to China. Since cartographic iconography overlaps with literal
1783, in the port of Macao, the vessel Antelope weighed anchor imagery, it is interesting to relate the reaction of some of the is-
under Captain Henry Wilson. Their voyage was from the begin- landers to a crew member's drawing. Amidst being entertained by
ning disoriented by high seas and heavy rains. O n August 1, their the king, the man, "being struck with the appearance of a woman
latitude was determined to be 16° 2 5 ' N, and the following day who was present, took out a piece of paper, and was making a
longitude, measured "by the distance of the sun and moon," was sketch of her figure." The woman sought to leave, but the king was
set at 1261/2 degrees east of Greenwich—they were in the seas east so enamored of the unfinished sketch that he "immediately sent
of Luzon. Terrible weather beset the ship for another week, with the a messenger to order two of his women to come to the house" who

Fig. 181. Father Cantova's map of the Caroline Islands, 1722, as engraved for Allerhand so lehr-als gesit-reich Brief, 1728.

#
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 187

Fig. 182. T h e Caroline and Philippine islands, Henry Wilson, 1788. [Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints]

"placed themselves at the window" where the artist was situated, about two feet above the level of the ground, and was about ten
from which "these ladies could stand without being seen lower than feet in width, having a broad flat stone running along the middle,
the waist," Once the sketch was completed and was presented to for the greater conveniency of walking," smaller stones lining the
the king, he showed it to the two women, "who seemed pleased in perimeter. Wilson and his shipwrecked crew were brought to a
viewing on paper a fancied likeness of themselves." house on a large central square, where a large number of people
The town of "Pelew" lay about a quarter mile inland. After had congregated "to see these new Beings the English."
ascending a bank and traversing a wood, the English were led over The account of the voyage by George Keate, along with
"a fine broad causeway ... with rows of trees on each side ... raised Wilsons map of Micronesia, was published in 1788 (Figs. 178
and 182). "The little cluster of islands I am now unveiling to the
world," the author waxed, "may truly be regarded as a rich jewel,
sparkling on the bosom of the ocean." The volume's straight-
forward account of the selflessness and kindness of the islands'
people directly contested the image of "savage, inhuman" people
"feeding upon human flesh" given by Father Cantova in 1722
based on what he claims to have been told by other Caroline
Islanders. Not only did Wilson's account exalt the humanity of the
Palauans, but it was observed that class distinctions were absent.
The king of the islands not only wore no clothing, but indeed had
not even "any ornament of distinction"—these words published
in Keate's popular book one year before the French Revolution.
The volume's map does nothing to flatter the voyage as one of
exploration. But as the account explains, "the Antelope was not a
ship particularly sent out to explore undiscovered regions or pre-
pared to investigate the manner of mankind; it had not on board
philosophers, botanists, draughtsmen, or gentlemen experienced
in such scientific pursuits." The map is merely a variation of the
Cantova map of 1722. Wilson, whose primary concern was to leave
as quickly as possible, failed even to learn that Palau had one major
island that in size dwarfed all the others in the archipelago.
Wilson reflects a common ignorance of the considerable effort
made by the Spanish to map the Carolines. Spanish missionaries,
he wrote, "unquestionably well informed of the poverty and
nakedness" of the Micronesians, "apprehended that they were
never likely to become an worthy object of the Spanish monarchy,"
and were therefore neglected, little being known about them other
than that "they occupy a certain space on the surface of the globe".
At the same time that Wilson's book was published, there also
began a flurry of major discoveries in other parts of Micronesia
188 Early Mapping of the Pacific

as an indirect result of the American Revolution. In the years

leading up to the Revolution, England was shipping about a
thousand convicts a year to her American colonies. Once inde-
pendence foiled that outlet for prisoners, New South Wales was
selected as a substitute. When British vessels began the return trip
after unloading convicts in eastern Australia, they typically sailed
north into Micronesian seas before turning west to China.
These discoveries began when the "First Fleet" was sent from
England with 776 convicts. Captains Thomas Gilbert and John
(sometimes "William") Marshall of the vessels Charlotte and
Scarborough were en route to China on the voyage home when
on June 18, 1788 three atolls were sighted. Many canoes were seen
on the beach, and many others were already heading toward them
in the water. The English were impressed by the lateen sail canoes,
which "tacked in a very expeditious manner, by shifting its lateen
sail (by which means the head becomes the stern), and went off
at a great rate." Marshall named the islands after his colleague
Gilbert, by which name they are still known in addition to the
official "Kiribati," which curiously is not an indigenous term, but
rather a Gilbertese pronunciation of "Gilbert."
Continuing north, after five days a new group was encountered
which Gilbert reciprocally named the Marshall Islands. They had
discovered the Radak (eastern) chain of the group. Marshall and
Gilbert assigned names to the individual isles they encountered;
although these have been replaced by their indigenous names,
Marshall's name still denotes the archipelago itself.
Several voyages added pieces to the puzzle. The first two
modern rediscoveries in the western, Ralik chain of the Marshalls
occurred in mid-December 1792, when another vessel returning
from New South Wales, the Royal Admiralunder Essex Henry
Bond, sighted the Namorik Atoll pair. The southern Gilberts
(Fig. 183) were "discovered" again in 1799 by the British trader
Charles Bishop after bringing a group of missionaries to Sydney,
and who had not learned of Gilbert and Marshall's discoveries.
Bishop named some of the Gilberts the Kingsmill Islands, by
which name they are sometimes found in the nineteenth century
(for example, Bennett, Fig. 207).
Nauru was discovered in 1798 by John Fearn, captain of a
"snow," a two-masted trading vessel, while en route from New
Zealand to Calcutta. Fearn "fell in with two strange islands, and a
very extensive range of shoals, which, not appearing on any chart
extant, are presumed to be discoveries." The longitude of Nauru
was read at 167° 18', about 40 kilometers too far east—Fearn
acknowledges his figures would be rough. The "solitary spot was
found extremely populous, although the nearest known land is
placed by the charts above six equatorial degrees distant." The
Nauruans were courteous and without weapons; he dubbed it
Pleasant. In modern times, the mining of this coral atoll's rich
phosphate deposits brought the Nauruans substantial income,
but as a result most of what Fearn had described as this "beautiful
little island" is now uninhabitable. Fearn also charted Eniwetok.

Above. Fig. 183. Kiribati (detail of general chart), Louis Duperrey, 1827. [Kauai
Fine Arts] Below-. Fig. 184. A detail from Kotzebue's map of Wotje, the first
published large-scale map of an individual Marshallese group. The easternmost
islet, "Odtia," is Wotje, principal of the archipelago's 72 islets. Vienna, 1825.
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 189

Captain Mertho in the Ocean, sailing from Sydney to China,

placed new Marshallese islands on the map, though which if any
were altogether new discoveries is unsure. An island he christened
after his ship is probably Banaba, and is marked by Duperrey
(Fig. 183). Another he named Catherine is probably Kwajalein,
and is recorded on many later maps, such as Tallis (Fig. 10).
Otto von Kotzebue was particularly fond of the Marshall
Islands, and on both his Pacific voyages seemed to come "home"
to them, the way Cook would come "home" to Tahiti. He first
reached the Marshalls in May 1816, en route from the Tuamotus
to Kamchatka. Along the way he "discovered" Utirik and Taka, not
realizing that Gilbert and Marshall had already placed these atolls
on the map as the Button Islands, but further investigation of the
Marshalls was not possible at that time because of his need to reach
the Arctic during the summer.
After piercing the Bering Strait, sailing along the American
coast to San Francisco, and visiting Hawaii, Kotzebue continued Above: Fig. 185. Chart of the Northern Part of the Group of Coral Islands ofRadak
west back to the Marshalls, finding a new island on New Year's Day andRalik, in October 1825. Published in London in 1830 with the English
1817, naming it for the occasion: this is Mejit, which typically account of Kotzebue's voyage, this map records his tracks through the northern
Marshalls from both expeditions. London, 1830. Center: Fig. 186. Kotzebue's
appeared as Miadi. Sailing southwest from Mejit, Kotzebue map of the Carolines, from his first Pacific voyage. Vienna, 1825. Below: Fig.
discovered an atoll group which he named Romanzov after the 187. The Caroline Islands according to Luis de Torres. Kotzebue, Vienna, 1825.
190 Early Mapping of the Pacific

expedition's patron. They pierced the vast lagoon on the southeast

through an opening still known as the Rurik Pass, naming the
lagoon Christmas Harbor, as they celebrated the holiday there
on January 6, the traditional date. After a cursory perusal of the
various islands by boat, Otdia (Wotje, Fig. 184) was selected as
the best anchorage for the Rurik. Three weeks were spent surveying
the group, which spans roughly 50 kilometers and in which they
counted 65 islets (there are 72 in all).
In his excursion through the Marshalls, Kotzebue inquired
from natives as to the geography of the region. From them he
learned that they were in the easterly of two chains, theirs being
called Radak ("sunrise") and the other, western chain the Ralik
("sunset"). By etching atolls in the sand and using bits of coral to
represent individual isles, the Marshallese were able to give their
Russian visitors a sense of the entire region.
Seven years later, in April 1824, Kotzebue was back in the
Marshalls. A new general chart of the northern Marshalls (Fig. 185)
was prepared, its depiction of the Ralik (western) chain relying
more heavily on islanders' input than the Radak chain.
After another reconnaissance of the Northwest Coast of Ameri-
ca and a return to Hawaii, he set sail again for the Marshalls, now
discovering Bikini (which he called Escholtz), to achieve infamy
in 1946 when its people were displaced to allow the conducting of
a nuclear explosion). The island's name, for no reason other than
time proximity, became attached to the popular two-piece bathing
garment that a French designer introduced four days after the first,
widely publicized nuclear test.
Kotzebue, who always seemed at ease when in the Marshalls,
waxed ecstatic about its people. He expressed the opinion that a
major reason why the Marshallese "derived characters so much
superior to those of other South Sea islanders" was due to "the
Fig. 188. Kosrae is said by Duperrey to have been first sighted by a Bostonian superior purity of manners among the females. Experience teaches
named "Crozer," perhaps an error for "Crocker," in 1804. Duperrey stayed in us, that wherever that sex is held in its due estimation, morals are
Kosrae (his Oualan) for ten days making the first survey of the island, extolling
proportionately refined." He witnessed a theater production by
the islands ample fresh food and the beauty of its women. [Kauai Fine Arts]
thirteen men and thirteen women, plus two men with shell horns.
"Deficient as was my knowledge of the language, I was still able
to understand the subject of this tragedy," a young girl who chose
death rather than accept a husband she did not love.
Even today, the different names and spellings of these myriad
atolls causes confusion, and names sometimes used to denote an
individual islet of an atoll complex are at other times applied to the
entire group. Mapmakers often interpreted each islet reported by
explorers as a distinct island in the greater ocean, and incorporated
every island reported without filtering them for the inevitable
duplication. In one instance—Starbuck, in the Line Islands—two
Nantucket captains with the same surname discovered the same
island in the same year, 1823. First was Obed Starbuck, en route
back to Massachusetts with a cargo of sperm oil, and then Valentine
Starbuck, who brought the Hawaiian king Liholiho to England.
One can easily forgive the mapmaker who dismisses coincidence
as a possible explanation for the contradictory "Starbuck" reports.
Sir Francis Beaufort, hydrographer of the Admiralty at the time
Darwin sailed, remarked that "the love of giving a multiplicity of
new and unmeaning names tends to confuse our geographical
Fig. 189. Kosrae (detail), Louis Duperrey, 1827. The three-dimensional depiction
of topography, first popularized in Cook's maps of Tahiti and other islands, has knowledge. The name stamped upon a place by the first discoverer
here become highly developed, if not necessarily accurate. [Kauai Fine Arts] should be held sacred bv the common consent of all nations; and in
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 191

new discoveries it would be far more beneficial to make the name their way and were driven in their canoes upon the Marianne
convey some idea of the nature of the place; or if it be inhabited, Islands." He reached the Carolines in June 1824.
to adopt the native appellation, than to exhaust the catalogue of Foreign presence in the Carolines increased markedly during
public characters or private friends at home." this period. The 1830s saw extensive European contact with
The danger engendered by such confusion was obvious when Pohnpei, and in the 1840s with Kosrae (Figs. 188 and 189). When
in 1841 two vessels from Charles Wilkes's fleet, the Peacock and the Pacific whaling peaked in the mid-1840s, the eastern Carolines
Flying Fish under William Hudson, were sent to survey Kiribati. were being used principally for resupplying, not for fishing. Chuuk
They found printed maps of the group "so inaccurate as to be a escaped pronounced Western contact longer than any other major
cause of danger rather than safety; for in them the islands are mul- Micronesian archipelago, though it was likely encountered early
tiplied, and every hummock or detached islet on the same reef is on. Enclosed in a vast reef about 200 kilometers in circumference,
represented as separate, and a name assigned to it." early Spanish explorers almost certainly came across the group of
Hudson found the Kiribati to be handsome people, the women islands. The islander-based map of Klein and its derivatives record
among the prettiest of those he had seen in Oceania. Many of the Chuuk as Hogoleu and Torres, but when Frederic Lutke spoke with
men had scars from the weapons used—long swords and spears Chuukese on his visit of 1828, they were not familiar with the term
spiked with shark teeth. Relations with the Kiribati were often Hogoleu; and Torres, which name remains today as an islet in south-
tense, and when a sailor disappeared, Hudson had a village des- westmost Chuuk, is more likely a transliteration of a Carolinian
troyed. The sailor was never found. In the course of their survey word than the surname of a forgotten Iberian captain.
of the small islands, two European beachcombers were found and Despite the key location of Chuuk from the whalers' vantage,
given passage back to the West—one an Irishman who had married about 800 kilometers southeast of Guam, and despite the fine
a chief's daughter, the other a Scot who had not seen a Westerner natural anchorage afforded by its encircling reef, extensive contact
in seven years, both of whom had deserted English whaling vessels. with the group did not begin until the 1880s. Certainly occasional
The Kiribati survey took longer than anticipated, longer than encounters did occur. One Manuel Dublon, for example, is said
supplies had been stored for. Rations of food and water were re- to have reached Chuuk in late 1814, but the only influence of the
duced as the pair of ships made their final trek north between the voyage on the map of Chuuk was affixing of the captain's name to
Ralik and Radak chains and turned east for Hawaii.
Kotzebue, like the Spanish before him, mapped the Carolines
Fig. 190. Chuuk, Caroline Islands, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. Chuuk's lagoon
from islander data. In the Marshalls on his first voyage, he came
encloses over 2100 square kilometers. [Donald A. Heald]
across two castaways from Woleai, some 2700 kilometers due west.
From their testimony, and perhaps drawing from the existing map
of Cantova (a copy of which is also included in his published
account), Kotzebue made a map of the Carolines from Palau on
the west through Chuuk and Ngatik on the east (Fig. 186).
In 1804, the US ship Mary left from Guam to search for
sources of trepang ("beche-de-mer"), a sea cucumber considered
a delicacy, in the Caroline Islands. Luis de Torres, an official on
Guam who would become head of the garrison there, went with
the Mary to discover why previous Carolinian visitors to Guam,
who had promised to return, had never been seen again. This led to
more geographic data. According to Adelbert Chamisso, naturalist
with Kotzebue, when Torres reached Woleai, he "used the reports
of the most experienced seafarers among the natives with regard
to the courses they sail to draw a map of all the islands known to
him." He remarks that its similarity to the Cantova map, "which
was unknown to him, is very remarkable" (Fig. 187).
Torres's map of Woleai itself (Guliay) appears as an inset on a
map of the Carolines published by Louis Freycinet, who explored
the Carolines in 1819. Freycinet compiled the general map along
the bottom, containing the Carolines, Marshalls, and Kiribati,
while his hydrographer, Louis Duperrey, is credited with the main
section recording the Uranies tracks northward from Pulusuk.
When Duperrey set sail in August 1822 to return to the Pacific,
he stated his intention "particularly to visit the Caroline Islands,
discovered by Magellan, about which, with the exception of the
eastern side, examined in our own time by Captain Kotzebue, we
have only very vague information, communicated by the mission-
aries, and by them learnt from stories told by savages who had lost
192 Early Mapping of the Pacific

one of its islands. The few early traders to settle in Chuuk did so The next step in the mapping of Chuuk was Dumont d'Urville
for its trepang. Not until Louis Duperrey, in 1824, was an attempt (Figs. 190 and 191). At the end of 1838, d'Urville's two vessels
made to give some cartographic form to the islands. entered inside the reef and began, for the first time, a comprehen-
Even Duperrey, during his five days in Chuukese waters, never sive survey of the archipelago. For each of four days, while sailors
actually entered the lagoon. Instead, he circled the reef to allow his in the vessels traded with the Chuukese, a party was sent out to
surveyors to map it from the outside, and brought aboard some explore the various islands. Relations between visitors and Chuu-
Chuukese from one of the keys on the northern reef, learning from kese were good except for an attack on one of the surveying teams.
them as best he could about the islands within. The names they Why was Chuuk bypassed by whalers in favor of Pohnpei and
gave tallied sufficiently well with those of the Hogoleu of the Kosrae through the latter nineteenth century? Chuuk was probably
Cantova map of 1722 for Duperrey to be confident that they were less suitable for providing ships' supplies than other islands in the
the same group. Duperrey's voyage also effected the first recorded area, and the nature of its internal wars disrupted food production
settlement of Europeans in Chuuk: two Englishmen, at their own more than other islands. Its women were less available to visiting
asking, were left behind there. sailors, and indeed d'Urville succeeded in winning the Chuukese
Frederic Liitke, sent into the Pacific in 1826 by Czar Nicholas I women's trust only after a member of the expedition cleverly re-
of Russia, reached the Carolines in November 1827. The task of fused a gift of a girl for the night, explaining that he was under a
surveying the group and its people occupied him for about a year, taboo against such intimacy.
and the chart he composed of the islands was the best yet made. Pohnpei remained all but invisible to mapmakers until the
Liitke believed that some of the islands he charted were new dis- voyage of Liitke. Not even the speck that Quiros's 1595 sighting
coveries, though most were probably known, mapped so poorly as of the island had placed on some manuscript charts found its way
to be confusing. He reached Chuuk in February 1828, staying by to published maps, and following that initial cursory encounter,
the reef for one day, having some limited trade contact with the the island hid itself from European eyes for another two centuries.
Chuukese. Liitke identified Chuuk with the "Quirosa" of Men- In 1773, a Spanish vessel under Felipe Tompson, crossing the
dafia's 1595 voyage, but that was actually Pohnpei. Pacific from Manila, reached what he called "Los Valientes,"

Fig. 191. Caroline Islands, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. D'Urville's map contains a general view of the islands extending from Palau through Chuuk, plus individual maps
of four islands, from left to right being Matthew (Marakei), Gouap (Yap), Goulou (Ngulu), and Pelew (Palau). [Donald A. Heald]
 Micronesia, the Elusive Isles 193

probably Ngatik, about 140 kilometers southwest of Pohnpei. forty canoes greeted them (see Fig. 16). After two attempts to land
Pohnpei itself was probably encountered fourteen years later by to conduct scientific surveys were thwarted by the Pohnpeians,
an American ship, the frigate Alliance, an important vessel in the Liitke sailed up the west coast to Nett Harbor on the north (near
American Revolution. After firing the final shots of that war, the what is now Kolonia), but the islanders again resisted any landing.
Alliance was assigned to transport tobacco to Europe, but Congress Their maiden charting of Pohnpei was first published in 1832
canceled the enterprise when she was damaged by rocks, repairs in Liitke's hydrographic atlas (Fig. 192). Despite the less than ideal
being too costly to justify. The Alliance was ultimately sold to conditions under which the survey was made, the result is admir-
Robert Morris, who converted her to an East Indiaman. Under able, with the island's contours well delineated, principal moun-
Thomas Read, a former captain in the Continental Navy, she left tains shown, magnetic declination recorded, and, perhaps most
Philadelphia in June 1787, bound for China by a new route important, reefs, and the passages through them, marked. Longi-
through Indonesia and the Solomon Islands. During the north- tude is about 18 kilometers too far east. The map was added as an
bound sail from Melanesia, two islands were encountered which inset on a general map in Liitke's Voyages of 1836, and later used
were not on Read's charts. The first, which might have been by Charles Darwin in his writing on reefs.
Pohnpei, he named "Morris" after the ship's owner, and the second Now that Pohnpei was mapped, tortoiseshell lured many vessels
he named for the ship herself, Alliance. there, one in 1833 taking 700 pounds' worth and leaving behind
Occasional encounters with neighboring islands continued, convicts. Resistance by the islanders failed to stop beachcombers,
but not until Frederic Liitke reached Pohnpei itself in January 1828 convicts, traders, and missionaries from settling on the island. The
was this largest of the eastern Carolines surveyed. The Russian island is still sometimes known by the name of Liitke's sloop,
expedition approached from the southeast, skimming near the Senyavin, though it already appears by its modern name (as
ruins of Nan Madol, then veered west and put in at Kitti, where Pounipet) on the widely disseminated Levasseur map (Fig. 5).

Fig. 192. The first published map of Pohnpei, surveyed by Frederic Liitke's expedition in January 1828, and published in his undated hydrographic atlas, ca. 1832.
A Lt. Zavalichine is credited with the work, and his name still denotes a cape on the north coast. Ant Atoll lies to the southwest, Pakin Atoll to the northwest.
Chapter 11
Surveyors, Whalers, and Missionaries

By the close of the eighteenth century, all the principal archi- John Kendnck, had made handsome profits trading iron chisels
pelagos of the Pacific lay upon the map. "Important discoveries for otter skins in the Northwest, and even though that enterprise
cannot now be made," the Russian explorer Krusenstern lamented returned to Boston in 1790 with a net loss due to other problems,
in the early nineteenth century. "Here and there an island, or group it had proven the potential of trade between the Northwest and
of islands, which is unexpectedly met with, is all that the most for- the Orient. To this end, the brigantine Hope, under Columbia
tunate discoverer can now hope for." The conquest of longitude alumnus Joseph Ingraham, sailed to the Pacific.
allowed scattered islands to be charted accurately enough to be Ingraham's principal contribution came soon after entering
identified and revisited with confidence, and the haphazard ex- the ocean, at the Marquesas on April 19, 1791 (Fig. 194). Sailing
ploration of the past gave way to government-sponsored surveys, N N W from Hiva Oa (La Dominica), he was surprised to see two
independent entrepreneurs, and missionaries. more islands, "as I knew we had seen and passed all the group called
The principal trades that motivated Pacific exploration were the Marquesas. I examined Captain Cook's chart of the world, his
sandalwood, trepang, sealing, whaling, and furs. Traders and voyages, and Quiros's voyage.... I also examined Mons. de Bougain-
missionaries often filled gaps missed by exploring expeditions, ville's account of circumnavigators and lands discovered by them,
though their discoveries, and the charts they improvised, were and all my charts and globes of modern date. But I could find no
seldom disseminated with the thoroughness of official expeditions, account of more than five islands in the group called Marquesas
and their survey methods lacked the equipment and specialization de Mendoza, or of any land laid down on the site of the islands we
of government enterprises. Government-sponsored surveys, how- then saw." Ingraham was admirably cautious, however. Although,
ever, were in large part undertaken for the ultimate benefit of "as I could not from the most diligent search find the least account
private enterprise. French and Russian sponsorship each produced of these islands, I conceive there could be no impropriety or pre-
a succession of voyages in which mapping was a primary focus, sumption in naming them and claiming the discovery as my own,"
each commander usually an apprentice of a previous voyage. he added that "should it be hereafter proved that islands in the
United States traders were prolific in the Pacific, and the strained same situation had been seen before, I renounce my claim with
resources of their young nation produced a single, though im- as little ceremony as I assumed it."
mensely important, Exploring Expedition. The "situation" Ingraham assigned the islands was reasonably
Even published maps were not necessarily distributed widely accurate, though slightly too far west; Nuku Hiva, for example,
among those who should have had them. For example, Captain was placed at 8° 5 5 ' S, 140° 50' W, compared with its actual
Henry Martin, in Tahiti in 1846, appears to have been using charts 140° 0 6 ' W He dubbed them with patriotic names from his very
that were decades old. The master of an American trading brig, he young country—Nuku Hiva was Federal Island, Ua Huka was
explains, "brought me his charts. He is an old stager in the Pacific Washington, and Ua Pou was Adams.
and gave me some valuable information as to the positions of Like Quiros and Cook before them, the crew of the Hope
islands inaccurately laid down by the early navigators & corrected seemed uniquely enamored of the Marquesans. "The girls were
since the introduction of chronometers." permitted on board without any hesitation," Ebenezer Dorr,
supercargo on the voyage, wrote in his log and journal."They were
The Marquesas in general small and young, quite naked and without exception the
After Russian explorers and James Cook demonstrated the huge most beautiful people I ever saw. Their shapes and features were
profits awaiting anyone able to collect furs in the American North- exquisite beyond description. They being naked there was no
west and sell them in China, entrepreneurs in the new United deception by dress. Their complexion varied, some of a copper
States were quick to exploit the opportunity. The first American and others of as fine complexion as any of ourselves. Their hair
circumnavigation, in the Lady Washington and Columbia under was various colors, long and fine, wearing it flowing in its natural
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 195

Above left: Fig. 193. En route to the Marquesas, Joseph Ingraham wrote in his Journal ofan island jutting from the sea: "It appeared nearly perpendicular and inaccessible
on all sides except the N.W. point where a boat might possibly land...." Above right. Fig. 194. A view of the Marquesas from the same journal. [Library of Congress]

curls. Of their ornaments we could not see any and suppose but Marchand, who had been infected with the desire to pursue the
few are worn by them.... On the whole their beauty and gentleness fur trade after meeting Nathaniel Portlock in St. Helena on the
with the rest of their charms were such that few could but admire way home from his circumnavigation. The Marquesas had not
them and none resist the impulse of the moment. They do not been a planned stop en route to the Northwest Coast, but the
appear to have any idea of shame or criminality." islands were the most convenient to remedy an unexpected
Such waxing breathed fresh life into Oceania as the realm of shortage of fresh water.
the Noble Savage at a time when better familiarity with Tahiti was Marchand chanced upon Ingraham's new islands by following
convincing others that if that island had ever been an earthly para- canoes that came daily to trade with them. While in Resolution
dise, a quarter century of European contact had ended it. Of more Bay, Marchand saw that among the canoes from which they pur-
enduring value, Ingraham demonstrated the value of the Marquesas chased supplies and "which returned, every evening, to its respec-
as a refreshment and reprovisioning port of call for vessels headed tive island, one or two always directed their course toward a point
to the Northwest Coast for the fur trade. Both these aspects helped of the horizon where hitherto navigators knew no land." So when
place the Marquesas on the cerebral "map." Marchand left Resolution Bay, he followed these canoes to the
Ingraham's surviving journal contains several maps of the island of Ua Pou, beginning his independent discovery of the
Northwest Coast and of the Pacific between Hawaii and Taiwan northern Marquesas. To the group he gave the name lies de la
(Figs. 195 and 196). Strangely, of this one significant Pacific dis- Revolution, unaware that Americans had already been there. Unlike
covery, there is only a small view (Fig. 194), no map. Although the American traders, the expedition charted the islands, and their
they were able to establish the coordinates of their Marquesan records were far more comprehensive, detailing the stilt-walking,
discoveries with reasonable competence, they lacked the means tattooing, body adornments and other arts, canoe making, and
to produce a detailed map of them, being merchants on a risky fishing techniques on the island of Tahuata.
venture, not explorers taking risks for academic ends. Further duplication of Marquesa Island names occurred when
Ironically, two months after Ingraham's discovery of the the Daedalus, under Lieutenant Richard Hergest, stopped in the
northern Marquesas, a French captain "discovered" the same new Marquesas in May 1792 en route to Hawaii to bring supplies to
Marquesa islands, and similarly christened them with nationalistic George Vancouver. The eventual return to their Marquesan names
names from his own post-revolutionary country. This was Etienne remedied the resulting confusion.
196 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 195. The Northern Pacific, from Joseph Ingraham, Journal of the Brigantine Hope, 1791. [Library of Congress]
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 197

Fig. 196. The northern Pacific, through Taiwan on the west (bottom), from Joseph Ingraham, Journal of the Brigantine Hope, 1791. Ingraham, covering these seas in
sailing from Hawaii to China in 1791, took the opportunity to muse over "islands and shoals, laid down in Lord Anson's [Fig. I l l ] and many other charts, which we
sailed over with great ease—as no such lands or shoals exist." [Library of Congress]
198 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 197. Tongatapu, southern Tonga Islands, James Wilson, 1799.

The London Missionary Society Sailing to the northwest they discovered the Mangareva group
The tales of Polynesian life that titillated the reading public and (Fig. 198), which they called the Gambier Islands, whose people
enlivened chat in portside pubs, also caught the attention of relig- seemed to be like those of smaller Timoe. "The main island, and
ious leaders and led to the establishment of the London Missionary those scattered about it," Wilson wrote, are "all high, and the reef
Society in 1795. James Wilson, chosen to lead the first proselytizing keeping the sea quite still about them, they present a view
voyage to the Pacific, selected his nephew William Wilson as first romantic, wild, and barren."
mate, and it was William who made the maps that accompanied The sensuous mystique of the Marquesas continued with the
the printed account of the voyage. Tahiti, the Marquesas, Tonga, arrival of the Duff, the encounter producing two of the more hum-
Hawaii, and Palau were selected to receive missionaries, though orous incidents recorded in missionary travels. "Our first visitors
the latter two were later omitted from the itinerary from the shore came early; they were seven beautiful young women,
With four clergymen, several artisans, and wives and children, swimming quite naked, except a few green leaves tied round their
the Duffhezded for Cape Horn, but wild seas made her crew middle." When the girls came aboard the ship, "our mischievous
reconsider. Now by way of Africa, Tahiti was reached in early goats" forfeited even this token adornment: as the girls "turned to
March 1797 (Fig. 144), and Tongatapu (Fig. 197) a month later. avoid them they were attacked on each side alternately, and com-
Sails were then set to backtrack to the east for the Marquesas, first pletely stripped naked," the goats on one side tearing off the leaves
falling far to the south in order to avoid the Tuamotus. Along the as the girls avoided those on the other. Goats seemed to be adept at
way, just southeast of the Tuamotus and north of Pitcairn, the diverting introductions—recall the rude kick given the first
"Crescent Island" of Temoe was discovered and mapped. The small Tahitian to step aboard a European ship (Wallis, page 140 above).
population of Temoese were not flattered by their attempt to land When the two intended missionaries were sent ashore, the local
and did not appear to understand their Tahitian interpreter, so the chief met them to be their host, wishing to "treat them with an
Duff continued for the Marquesas rather than risk confrontation. excursion to another valley." One of the Englishmen, William
The coordinates they assigned Temoe were near perfect. Crook, readily agreed. The other, John Harris, refused, so the chief,
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 199

"desirous of obliging him," accommodated him as he thought

most hospitable: he assigned a woman to remain with him for the
night. But when Harris steadfastly declined the hospitality, the
woman, baffled that a man would refuse her company, "became
doubtful of his sex," and related the incident to her female friends.
Together they returned to the shore in the middle of the night as
the missionary slept, tore off his clothes and "satisfied themselves
concerning this point." Thus abruptly ended the stay of one of the
first two European missionaries in the Marquesas, who fled to
the Duff "in a most pitiable plight, like one out of his senses."
Crook stayed. The following year, in 1798, the American
captain Edmund Fanning reached Tahuata and found Crook, well
tanned and wearing nothing but a loincloth. Crook warned that an
Italian deserter on the islands was trying to kill him and to capture
Fanning's vessel. Crook was offered passage to New York, but
instead chose to stay on another of the Marquesas, Nuku Hiva.
After the company completed their missionary tasks in the Above: Fig. 198. Mangareva, James Wilson, 1799. Below: Fig. 199. The
Marquesas, they set about improving the mapping of the archi- Marquesas Islands, James Wilson, 1799.
pelago. "As we had reason to suppose them erroneously marked in
the sketch we had on board", they headed for "Trevenen's" (Ua
Pou) and "Sir Henry Martin's" (Nuku Hiva) Islands, "intending
to observe their relative situation to Santa Christina" (Tahuata).
Wilson's map improves upon Cook's only in that it includes Nuku
Hiva, Ua Huka, and Ua Pou, which islands Cook did not know.
But Wilson's delineation of Hiva Oa and Mohotane are actually a
step backwards from Cook. Nuku Hiva is centered about 12 kilo-
meters too far east, and its north coast is little known.
Beginning her trek home after returning to Tahiti and Tonga,
the Duff hit coral rock in Fijian waters. For some nervous moments
their imagination, "quick and fertile on such occasions," saw Fijians
"dancing round us, while we were roasted on large fires." Daylight
came and "showed us the dangers which lay hid on every side ...
and made us very desirous to get clear of them as fast as possible."
A maze of islands was skirted, "some at a distance from the tacks
of Captain Bligh in the launch of the Bounty, and afterwards in the
Providence." Wilson, like those before him and still for decades to
come, was unprepared for the challenges of Fiji's waters, for which
no good navigational chart existed. These islands "doubtless are
connected with those which the people at Tongataboo call the
Feejees ... they are high, and all we could distinctly see appeared
fertile." The Duffs tracks are marked on Wilson's chart (Fig. 200),
as are the tracks and discoveries of Bligh on his flight to safety on
the Bounty's launch after the mutiny.
Continuing northwest en route to Palau, Wilson came across
"ten or eleven separate islands, two or three of which were of
considerable size," in waters where no islands were recorded
(Fig. 201). Two men in a canoe approached the Duffhut kept a Russian Expeditions Combine Science and Commerce
cautious distance as they "hooped and Hallooed in a harsh tone, Before the nineteenth century, Russian expeditions pursuing the
not seemingly as a menace or defiance, but the effect of surprise fur trade had surveyed northern Pacific shores, but not Oceania. A
and a mixture of other passions at so wonderful a sight, having, new crop of Russian expeditions combined scientific exploration
in all probability, never beheld a ship before." These they named with those commercial goals, yielding some of the finest early large-
"Duff's Group" after their vessel, by which name the archipelago, scale mapping of Oceania. These began with A. J. von Krusenstern,
about 150 kilometers northeast of Santa Cruz, is still known. who, like most Russian sailors of the day competent to command
Unlike Wilson's other maps, the Duff chart does not mark coordi- a major voyage, had trained in England.
nates. Wilson explains why: "the weather being gloomy, with Based on what he observed in a first voyage to the Pacific,
drizzling rain, we had no observation for the latitude." Krusenstern convinced the czar of the immense profits possible by
200 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 200. Chart of Fiji, James Wilson, 1799. "Blighs Islands" in the lower left are Viti Levu and the Yasawa group, which Captain Bligh and company discovered
en route to Timor in the launch in which the Bounty mutineers had sent them adrift. The islands in the lower right are the Lau group.
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 201

while Lisiansky became first in command of the Neva. They sailed

in August 1803, Nuku Hiva being chosen as a rendezvous should
the fleet become separated, as it did.
On the way to the Marquesas, the Neva skimmed Easter Island,
trading offshore with the islanders and charting the coast. The fleet
rejoined at the Marquesas as planned, finding Edward Roberts, an
Englishman who had been living there for nine years and who had
married a chief's daughter, and his adversary Jean Baptiste Cabri,
a Frenchman who had also settled in the islands. Both of these ex-
patriots proved invaluable for the first-hand knowledge they had
amassed of the islands. Cabri unintentionally (?) sailed back to the
West when the ships precipitously left in strong winds, then earned
his livelihood exhibiting his considerable Marquesan tattoos.
When Krusenstern and colleagues set about perusing the Nuku
Fig. 2 0 1 . The Duff group, James Wilson, 1799.
Hiva interior, they "entered a romantic, beautiful country, and
found ourselves in a large forest, that seemed to reach to the chain
of mountains behind. The greatest part of the trees in this forest
conducting the fur trade by sea: sailing to Alaska to resupply the were apparently about seventy or eighty feet high, and chiefly cocoa
outposts there and collect furs, then to Canton to sell the furs and and bread-fruit trees, as was easily to be distinguished by the fruit
load Asian goods, then around Africa and back to Russia. The czar with which they were all loaded. Several winding rivulets, that
added to this list scientific objectives, and pursuing recent over- rushed with considerable noise and rapidity from the mountains,
tures from Japan for Russian trade at Nagasaki. Two vessels, the and whose beds of large broken rocks formed the most beautiful
Nadeshda and the Neva, were purchased in England by Urey cascades, crossed each other and watered the habitations of the
Lisiansky and supplied with the finest instruments and the latest valley. In the vicinity of these habitations, a number of plantations
charts. Krusenstern commanded the enterprise in the Nadeshda, of taro-root and cloth-mulberry, laid out in great order, and

Fig. 202. "Map of the Marine Discoveries of Russian Navigators in the Pacific and the icy seas, accomplished in various years. Compiled at His Imperial Majesty's depot
of charts, corrected by the latest observations of foreign navigators, and engraved in the year 1802." Separately published Russian map, extending from Vancouver
through Japan, composed just as a new wave of Russian voyages improved the mapping of the northernmost Pacific. [Library of Congress]
202 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 2 0 3 . Tuamotu Islands as mapped by Otto von Kotzebue on his first voyage. Vienna, 1825.

Though Krusenstern did not hold their civilization in high

regard, he found socio-political meaning in the Marquesans' physi-
cal beauty. Not only will the beauty of other peoples of Oceania
"be found to bear no comparison" with those of the Nuku Hiva,
but in addition their beauty is not "a distinction which nature has
given to the erihs or nobles, but exists here almost without excep-
tion." His two explanations for this "classlessness" of beauty is
insightful to the times: first was "owing to the more equal distri-
bution of property," and second in what he perceived as a lack of
despotism, believing that the "Nukahiwer does not acknowledge
in the person of his king, tyrant to whom he must sacrifice his best
power and abilities, without daring to consider his own preserva-
tion, or that of his family."
When he sent one of his officers "to examine the coast of
Nukahiwa to the west of the bay of Tayo-Hoae," he "discovered a
harbor about five miles from the bay, of which he brought me so
favorable an account, that I determined to visit it." An hour and
a half of rowing in two boats, "we arrived there at ten in the morn-
ing. At the entrance of the bay, the west side of which was formed
by lofty and perpendicular rocks of a very wild but beautiful
appearance, we found twenty fathoms water over a bottom of
fine sand and clay ... you open upon the finest bason that can be
imagined: it lies in a north-east and south-west direction, is about
200 fathoms deep and 100 wide: at the bottom of it is an even
sandy beach, and behind this a green flat resembling a most beauti-
ful bowling-green. Streams of clear water flowed in various places
from the mountains that rise beyond the beach and the green flat
behind it; and in a very picturesque and inhabited vale, lying a
Fig. 204. New Zealand, from Krusenstern s atlas, 1827. [Martayan Lan, NY]
good deal to the northward of the entrance, and by the natives
called Schegua, is a rivulet, which, considering the size of Nuka-
surrounded with a neat enclosure of white staves, bore the appear- hiwa, cannot be deemed small, that empties itself into the northern
ance of belonging to a people who had already carried cultivation side of the bay." The advantages of such a bay were that it "is so
to a considerable extent; and these delightful prospects assisted a completely land-locked, that the most violent storm would scarcely
great deal in removing the unpleasant sensations we experienced have any effect upon the water, and a ship in need of repairs could
upon reflecting, that we were amidst the dwellings of cannibals." not wish for a finer harbour, for such a purpose." In his surveying,
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 203

Krusenstern's policy regarding the chronometer was that if lunar Continuing west, they sailed through the Radak chain of the
observations and the chronometer were within a quarter of a Marshalls (see Chapter 10), on to Kamchatka and through the
degree, the chronometer would be trusted, but if a series of clear Bering Strait, then to California and on to Hawaii. He tried, but
Lunar observations failed to agree with the instrument, then the failed, to locate an island discovered in 1807 by Charles Johnston
chronometer would be presumed to be in error. while in command of the Cornwallis—known to Kotzebue after
Various aspects of Marquesan life were documented, from the discovering vessel's name. Tiny Johnston Island, now used by
stilt-walking described earlier by Marchand's visit, to polyandry. the US military, was not mapped in detail until 1892, when it was
It was the latter that now seemed to fascinate the West; Lisiansky being considered as a cable station.
describes how rich girls would take two husbands, one subordinate In 1823, Kotzebue set off on a second exploratory voyage to
to the other. The secondary husband is "generally poor, but hand- the Pacific. After docking in Portsmouth for a trip to London to
some and well-made." Although he is sometimes chosen after purchase new charts, chronometers, and astronomical instruments,
marriage to the first husband, more commonly two men would they sailed around the Horn and made for the Tuamotus once
offer themselves jointly to the same girl, who if she accepts them again, verifying the positions he had assigned individual islands
would decided their ranking. on his previous voyage, discovering Fangahina and Aratika, then
After Krusenstern reached Russia in 1806, the wealthy Count on to Tahiti and Samoa.
Romanzov proposed that a new expedition be sent to search for a Kotzebue was also a bit harsh on the existing mapping of
Northwest passage. Krusenstern recommended Otto von Kotze- Samoa, his next objective (Fig. 205). "Neither Roggeveen nor
bue, who at age fifteen had been cadet clerk on the earlier voyage.
Instruments were purchased in London by Krusenstern, and a
Fig. 205. Samoa, Otto von Kotzebue, London, 1830. [Library of Congress]
vessel was built in Abo, Sweden (now Finland). The expedition
sailed from Kronstadt, in the bay off St. Petersburg, on July 30,
1815. Krusenstern set about compiling his Atlas of the Southern Sea,
not published until 1827 in St. Petersburg (Figs. 151 and 204).
A stop in Plymouth allowed Kotzebue to meet with a surveyor
from the Vancouver expedition, and to correct the expedition's
chronometers. They also purchased charts by Horsburgh, Purdy,
and Arrowsmith, and other supplies "which are no where to be
had better and cheaper than in London."
Kotzebue entered the Pacific around Cape Horn early in 1816,
sailed up the Chilean coast to Conception Bay and then west into
the ocean. After a brief stop in Easter Island—made difficult
because apprehensive islanders remembered abuses by an American
vessel in search of slaves eleven years earlier—Tikahua, an atoll in
the Tuamotus, was discovered and named for his mentor, Krusen-
stern (leftmost island in Fig. 203).
204 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Bougainville have given their situation accurately," he wrote, "nor The French Expeditions
have these original errors been perfectly corrected by the unfortu- Two surveying expeditions were sent to tackle poorly known coasts
nate La Perouse, or the Englishman Edwards," the last being a ref- of southern and western Australia at the turn of the nineteenth
erence to the voyage sent to capture Bligh's mutineers. Kotzebue century, one English, under Matthew Flinders (1801-3), the other
does indeed map the Samoas more completely, though the coordi- French, under Nicolas-Thomas Baudin (1802-3). Both expedi-
nates calculated by La Perouse (Fig. 1 GG) were nearly as good as tions resulted in excellent charts of Australia.
his. Like his predecessors, Kotzebue missed Pago Pago Harbor. Aboard the Baudin expedition were two brothers, Henri and
Nor did the Samoans of Tutuila (Maouna) fare well in Kotze- Louis Freycinet. Henri conducted some of the important surveying
bue's estimation, his account referring frequently to the attack on of Australian shores, in King George Sound and the southern coast
La Perouse's crew. He spoke of being "surrounded by the descend- through Cape Leeuwin, and along Australia's northwestern coast.
ants of the barbarian murderers," and the suspicion that "some of Louis assisted the naturalist Francois Peron with the publication
the actors in the atrocious deed might even themselves be amongst of the voyage's materials, and when Peron died, completed the pro-
the crowd which now assembled around us." ject. Their map of Australia (Fig. 206) was issued in 1811, three
From a Samoan isle which Kotzebue called the "Flat Island" years before that of Flinders, whose ailing ship had forced him to
(Manono), a chief came and presented presents. When Kotzebue put in at Mauritius, where he was imprisoned 1803-10 as a spy.
asked how he had come across a parasol and a Spanish dollar he With the maps of Freycinet and Flinders, the whole of the
had with him, he explained that he had sailed in his canoe to Australian coast was finally laid down comprehensively. Freycinet's
Tongatapu—which lies about 900 kilometers SSW. After com- nomenclature was more idiosyncratic, for example, designating
pleting his new chart of the archipelago, Kotzebue sailed for his the entirely eastern breadth of the southern coast after Napoleon
favorite jaunt, Otdia in Wotje (Marshall Islands), of which he had and filling it with French place names, such as Bonaparte for the
produced a fine chart on his previous voyage (Fig. 184). Spencer Gulf and Josephine for the Gulf St. Vincent. A subsequent
The last of the Russian Pacific voyages of this period was that edition of the map conformed to the Flinders map in labeling
of the great Frederic Liitke, whose principal contributions were his regions after their discoverers, including Baudin himself.
mapping of the Caroline Islands (Fig. 192), and to a lesser, but still Louis Freycinet returned to the Pacific as commander of his
significant extent, mapping of the northernmost Pacific (Fig. 41). own expedition in 1817-20, as France was pulling itself from the

Fig. 206. Australia, Louis Freycinet, 1808. [Gowries Galleries]

 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 205

chaos of the Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic period. His

stated goals emphasized relatively esoteric matters of science,
such as the true shape of the earth, magnetic phenomena, tides,
currents, and winds. Life at sea, though still difficult, was becoming
more humane than the voyages of just a few decades earlier—the
350-ton corvette Uranie carried canned food and machines for
distilling sea water. Among the crew was Freycinet's young wife,
disguised as a boy—a serious breach of navy regulations. Contem-
porary society was so endeared by the romance of their story,
however, that he was never censured.
Freycinet entered the Pacific by the Indian Ocean, stopping
at Shark's Bay in western Australia and then continuing north to
Timor, the Moluccas, thence the Caroline Islands, north to the
Marianas, and finally due east to Hawaii, the limit of the outbound
voyage. In Hawaii, he was warmly received by the Hawaiian Court,
whose preoccupations with liquor and Christianity were obvious.
Routing their return via the south Pacific, Freycinet had in-
tended to stop at Tahiti but was prevented by the prevailing winds,
despite the crew's self-motivation to conquer those winds. After
passing through the Samoan Islands, they reached Port Jackson Fig. 207. Detail of the general map from Frederick Bennett, Narrative of a
in Australia, and set out for France by recrossing the Pacific at a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, 1840. Bennett sailed with the whaler Tuscan
to study the natural world, and marked some of his observations on this map.
southerly latitude and rounding South America into the Atlantic. His use of a whale motif to denote sightings of the animal was echoed by the US
But the Uranie was wrecked in a storm off Tierra del Fuego, with government on Matthew Maury's more comprehensive whale map (Fig. 219).
the loss of some of its archives. The crew survived two months as
castaways until an American vessel, the Mercury, chanced by. Frey-
cinet purchased the American vessel and returned to France, where
he was acquitted in a court martial for having lost his vessel, but
then had difficulty getting the financial backing with which to get
the account of his expedition published.
Freycinet's voyage contributed to the corpus of ethnological,
natural history, magnetic, and hydrographic data. The glamor of
discovery did not accompany his return—even a small island in
the Samoas he "discovered" and named Rose for his wife, was in
fact the Vuyle of Roggeveen. Charles Darwin studied this "chart
of Rose Island ... given by Freycinet, from which I should have
thought that it had been an atoll," but other reports suggested that
it "cannot be properly classed with atolls, in which the foundations
are always supposed to lie at a depth, greater than that at which
the reef-constructing polypifers can live."
Louis Isidore Duperrey, a hydrographer and member of Frey-
cinet's expedition, proposed a new voyage which gained official
approval and was granted a 380-ton corvette. Duperrey planned a
route which would complement Freycinet's itinerary. He intended
"to rectify, either by direct, or by chronometrical observations, the
position of a great number of points in different parts of the globe,
especially among the numerous island groups of the Pacific Ocean,
notorious for shipwrecks, and so remarkable for the character and
the form of the shoals, sandbanks, and reefs, of which they in part
consist; also to trace new routes through the Dangerous Archi-
pelago and the Society Islands, side by side with those taken by
Quiros, Wallis, Bougainville, and Cook; to carry on hydrographi-
cal surveys in continuation of those made in the voyages of
d'Entrecasteaux and of Freycinet in Polynesia, New Holland, and
the Molucca Islands...." Second in command was Jules Sebastien Fig. 208. Western Bora Bora, Duperrey, 1827. Duperrey's chart, with extensive
soundings, guided vessels through the reef's one navigable passage, Teavanui
Cesar Dumont d'Urville, who would later conduct two monu-
Pass. The nature of the sea floor is indicated by key—mud or silt, coral, sand.
mental Pacific voyages of his own, one reaching Antarctica. A mission is marked at the town of Vaitape, an observatory to the north.
206 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 209. New Zealand, 1842, compiled by C. A Vincendon-Dumoulin from surveys made on both of Dumont d'Urville's Pacific commands. [Lahaina Prinstsellers, Ltd]

Duperrey left France in 1822, sailed west around South to the Moluccas, where they crossed south of the Indies and back-
America and followed the continent's coast to near the equator tracked east through the Torres Strait, and on to Australia. Leaving
before heading southwest into the open ocean. Extensive work Sydney with the missionary George Clarke, Duperrey sailed east
was done on magnetic diurnal variation (the daily variation of the to New Zealand, where he spent two weeks in the Bay of Islands
compass). After about a month crossing the Pacific, they reached in April 1824. From New Zealand they sailed north to Rotuma,
the Tuamotus and made landfall on one inhabited isle, discovered where they found four deserters from the whaler Rochester well
three uninhabited ones, and then sailed for Tahiti, which had not integrated into island life, and then on to the Carolines.
been visited by a French expedition since Bougainville. Bougain- After the expedition's return, second-in-command d'Urville
ville's idyllic description of Tahiti, and in particular the romantic- noted that with the basic outline of the Pacific now set and pro-
ists who massaged that description to suit their philosophies, had longed visits to various islands more practical, the brief stops and
created quite some anticipation among Duperrey s crew But when hurried passages of the circumnavigations should now give way to
the sailors arrived in 1823, they found a puritanical society con- more careful large-scale surveys: "The expedition on the Coquille
trolled by strict English fundamentalists who had learned to exploit in which I have just taken part has amply proved to me that a voy-
the Tahitian political system. The four-year-old heir to the crown, age around the world is capable of rendering real services to geo-
Pomare III, was being given a strictly English education, and was graphy." But the focus was shifting from the "filling in the blanks"
crowned as the missionaries' puppet at age five. His father, King of the eighteenth century to the need for impeccable, large-scale
Pomare II, had converted to Christianity in 1807, ten years after surveys: "The scene of these operations must be limited ... the
the arrival of Wilson's missionaries on the Duff, then a year later navigator who makes an exact study of some still unknown region
been expelled by his own subjects, but regained power in 1809, of the globe will do something more worthwhile than someone
determined to convert the Tahitians by force. whose ship has plowed through the immense spaces of the sea and
From Tahiti, Duperrey sailed northwest to Bora Bora (Fig. only hastily visited some of the islands scattered there." To that
208), where the island civilization had also undergone dramatic end, d'Urville undertook a new expedition, sailing on the same
change. Sailing west from the Societies, Duperrey made better 380-ton corvette that was the Coquille of the Duperrey voyage,
charts of some of theTongan Islands, Ndeni (Santa Cruz), and but renamed LAstro lake after La Perouse's vessel, since part of his
Buka in the Solomons. They continued to New Ireland and on mission would be to investigate a whaler's report of having sighted
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 207

Fig. 210. Fiji, Dumont d'Urville, 1830. Fiji was a daunting challenge to surveyors; here the major islands are still only partially mapped. [Donald A. Heald]

the hero's wreck between the Louisiades and New Caledonia.

French aspirations of a colony in southwest Australia brought
the expedition to its first major stop, King George Sound, where
an observatory was set up and charts made of the coast. New South
Wales was next, after which they steered for New Zealand, reaching
its shores in early 1827. D'Urville and his cartographers worked
their way up the west coast of the South Island, then turned toward
the Cook Strait, where in the process of making a detailed survey
of Tasman Bay, what had been supposed to be its northwestern tip
was found to be an island—now named for the commander. Evo-
lutionary improvements on existing charts were made as the crew
sailed north; the Hauraki Gulf, where Auckland now sits, was
judged a good site for a colony.
From New Zealand, d'Urville sailed for Tongatapu. Although
relations between the Tongans and French were outwardly friendly,
Fig. 2 1 1 . Vanikoro (Santa Cruz Islands), Dumont d'Urville, 1830. O n a stop in
some Tongans had plotted to take the Astrolabe, and d'Urville Tasmania during his first Pacific expedition, Dumont d'Urville was informed that
managed to take leave of the island only after ten days of violence Peter Dillon had followed evidence of the lost navigator, La Perouse, to the island
of Vanikoro, where artefacts from the voyage were found. D'Urville went to inves-
and diplomacy successfully returned several kidnapped sailors.
tigate, collected more evidence of the wreck, and produced this map, showing the
Next, they attempted the mapping of Fiji—one of the most larger island of Banie and its smaller neighbor, Tevai. Vanikoro "offers a striking
difficult archipelagos to chart in all of Oceania because it is a example of a barrier-reef," Charles Darwin later wrote. "It was first described by
the Chevalier Dillon, in his voyage, and was surveyed in the 'Astrolabe'," that is,
complex series of islands strewn with hazards, making passage by d'Urville, this being the map that Darwin consulted. Mendaiia and Quiros
through it extremely dangerous. D'Urville approached Fiji from were at the northern part of the Santa Cruz group in 1595, and Carteret reached
the east, into the Koro Sea, which though deep has many poten- Vanikoro in 1767. The first serious attempt at mapping the archipelago was
carried out by d'Entrecasteaux during his search for La Perouse (see Figs. 1 6 9 -
tially disastrous reefs. Realizing that his zeal to map the island 171). But it was probably Jules Verne, in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, from
had led him into a potentially deadly maze, he had Fijians help whom most people know of Vanikoro. [Donald A. Heald]
208 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 212. D'Urville's ships, the Astrolabe and Zelee, anchored in Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, 1838. Lithograph, ca. 1845.

navigate the Astrolabe out of those dangerous waters, then followed After a reprieve in the Indonesia island of Amboina, d'Urville
a southerly course. The result of this concession to safety is easily sailed around Australia to Tasmania, where he learned of Peter
seen in the map in Fig. 210: Viti Levu, the large island to the left of Dillon's discovery of the wreck of La Perouse's ship. This having
center, has only its southern and western coasts, completely lacking been a goal of d'Urville himself, he sailed for Vanikoro, where he
the north and east; the island is in truth a rough oval. Looking to confirmed the find, collected artefacts, and made a detailed map
the northeast to the island of Vanua Levu, only fragments of the of the island (Fig. 211). Sickness among his crew deterred him
claws forming Natewa Bay appear, and the southwestern bulk of from looking amongst the Solomons for survivors of that ill-fated
the island is altogether lacking. Nonetheless, many of the smaller, voyage. Instead, he sailed north to the Caroline Islands, then
scattered islands are recorded, including the Yasawa group, dis- Guam, and back home to France in March 1829. Forty-five fine
covered by William Bligh along with Viti Levu in a nearly fatal new charts were added to the corpus of Pacific cartography as a
episode en route to the Indies after the mutiny result of this first voyage under d'Urville's command, though he
During his three weeks mapping Fiji, d'Urville consulted with was criticized for having failed to produce one particularly coveted
a man from Tonga and one from Guam, from whom he acquired chart—the Torres Strait.
the names of many islands in the archipelago. In addition to the Eight years later, d'Urville was sent back to the Pacific with two
general map above, several larger-scale maps of Fiji were produced. ships, the Astrolabe of his previous voyage, and the Zelee, under
From Fiji, d'Urville's next mapping stop was the Loyalty Charles-Hector Jacquinot. Vincendon-Dumoulin was principal
Islands, just east of New Caledonia, and then the long chain of hydrographer. After two months fulfilling an assignment to investi-
reefs extending N N W from New Caledonia to little Huon Island. gate the iceberg-laden seas of Antarctica, which he did as best he
Next, he set out for the Torres Strait to lay down its difficult pass- could with their inadequately shielded vessels, he sailed for warmer
ages with precision, this being a specific assignment of his sponsors, seas in early March 1838, first to Mangareva (Gambier Islands),
but the weather prevented any such attempt. Instead, he traversed then on to the Marquesas (Figs. 212 and 213).
the dangerous Louisiades, just southeast of New Guinea, and then Three months were devoted to the mapping of Samoa and
charted a large portion of New Guineas northern coast that had refining the previous voyage's mapping of Fiji. The Solomons were
remained little known. New Britain was to have been charted as surveyed next, followed by a passage through the Carolines and
well, but the surveys were impossible because of unceasing rains. on to Guam, then Palau. Micronesia's balmy seas were left for a
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 209

Fig. 213. Marquesans on d'Urville's ship in Taiohae Bay, on the south coast of Nuku Hiva, 1838. Lithograph, ca. 1845.

second attempt to penetrate the high latitudes to Antarctica,

where d'Urville briefly encountered the American Charles Wilkes.
After a stop in New Zealand, surveys were conducted of the
Loyalty Islands, of the Louisiade Archipelago, and finally, lest he
return home to the chastisement of the previous voyage, he made
a meticulous survey of the Torres Strait.
The project of publishing his charts and journals was cut short
by tragedy. Soon after his return to France, d'Urville, the explorer
who had gotten the Venus de Milo for France, having survived
three monumental Pacific voyages, was killed, along with his wife
and son, in one of the world's early train wrecks, outside Paris.

Mapping below the Surface

In 1806, most of the crew of the English private ship of war Port
au Prince were massacred in Tonga. A survivor, the clerk William
Mariner, became an adopted son of King Finau. The account of
his four years in Tonga was compiled by J. Martin, supplemented
and corroborated by another stranded youth, Jeremiah Higgins.
Accompanying the 1827 account of Mariner's observations,
published in Edinburgh for Constables Miscellany, was a map of the Fig. 214. Nuku Hiva, Abel Pilon, ca. 1885. Despite the importance of Taiohae
Bay during the height of Pacific whaling, parts of Nuku Hiva remained, as the
archipelago (Fig. 215). Martin's text cites the map's addition of the map marks in the west, "parts unknown." Published shortly before Robert Louis
Vava'u group, noting that it was not visited or mapped by Cook. Stevenson visited the island, and Paul Gauguin settled there, its deline-ation of the
west and northwest bears little resemblance to the coast's actual shape. Four
But Vava'u was hardly new to maps at this time, and his map actu-
decades had already passed since the young Hermann Melville had deserted ship
ally places that northern (leftmost) island more accurately in longi- off Nuku Hiva, and then brought the island to the popular imagination with his
tude than the earlier known island of Tongatapu. "The situation "Peep at Polynesian Life," Ty pee.
210 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Fig. 215. The Tongan archipelago, from William Mariner's account of the islands, 1827.

of the submarine cavern" is marked just southwest of Vava u, this named John Middleton, had a chart of the Tuamotos with each
being an early record of the cave now named for Mariner. Mariner island labeled according to its indigenous name. Fitzroy copied
learned of the cave when Finau and others dove into the sea and this, along with further information gotten from the son of a
did not come up. They had gone to drink "cava" (kava), another missionary resident in Tahiti, onto Kotzebue's chart of the Tuam-
Tongan explained, who told Mariner to follow him into the sea. otus (Fig. 203), whose atlas was among his onboard references.
While Mariner's was one of the more colorful instances of the
mapping of subaquatic Pacific features, undersea phenomena were The United States Exploring Expedition
becoming more and more a focus of the hydrographer's eyes. One The young United States sponsored an expedition to the Pacific
avid student of the new hydrographic charts was the young Charles as remarkable as Britain's Cook, France's La Perouse, and Russia's
Darwin, who sailed to the Pacific aboard Captain Robert Fitzroy's Kotzebue. The purpose of the United States South Seas Exploring
Beagle. At the end of December 1831, the Beagle left Portsmouth Expedition, or US Exploring Expedition as it was commonly
with twenty chronometers and six survey boats, among other fine known, was eminently practical: to explore and chart the Pacific
equipment, her crew charged with recording data about tides, for the betterment of the nation's commerce. Among its unlikely
winds, and currents, and making astronomical and meteorological origins was the goal of reaching Antarctica to pursue a theory being
observations. Point Venus in Tahiti and the observatory at Parra- promoted by one John Symmes, that the earth is hollow and that
matta in Port Jackson (Australia), both of whose longitudes had entrances to its interior would be found at either pole. This theory,
been carefully determined many times, allowed the Beagles crew though not popular then, has not entirely vanished; a polar "hole"
to verify the accuracy of its own chronometers. is still being entertained as the entrance to fabled Agharta, propo-
Five weeks were spent making a survey of the Galapagos, the nents even using purported NASA images to support their claims.
islands with which Darwin is most famously associated. Although The concept had noble proponents. Ancient in its origins, Edmund
the Tuamotus were deliberately skimmed en route to Tahiti, time Halley is generally credited with giving it scientific respectability,
and resources had not permitted survey work there; Fitzroy none- and the American puritan, Cotton Mather, with religious approval.
theless was able to compile unpublished data about the Tuamotus In 1828, with John Quincy Adams as President, Congress
from a couple of people he met in Tahiti. One, a fellow Englishman approved the expedition with the understanding that it would not
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 211

published, but they were inadequate to allow a vessel safe passage

through Fijian waters, even if they were available in Salem. Good
charts of Fiji would benefit the young nation's economy.
Wilkes's mandate was "for the purpose of exploring and
surveying [the Pacific], as well to determine the existence of all
doubtful islands and shoals, as to discover and accurately fix the
position of those which lie in or near the track of our vessels in that
quarter...." Congress made clear that scientific endeavors without
direct commercial application, though of interest, were not the
mission's primary objective. The impetus for the expedition, rather,
was "the important interests of our commerce embarked in the
whale-fisheries, and other adventures in the great Southern Ocean...."
A year into the voyage, in August 1839, the expedition reached
the Tuamotus and began their triangulation surveys. Wilkes's
methods were exacting, his discipline strict to a fault, and of the
sixteen Tuamotu islands they charted, three could not be found
on any existing chart—Taiaro, Kawehe, and Ahii.
After surveying the Tuamotus, sails were set for Tahiti, which
they reached in mid-September 1839. The dramatic change
effected in Tahiti by puritanical, fundamentalist missionaries was
applauded by Wilkes, who considered his sailors' disappointment
an asset to their surveying tasks. Point Venus assumed its usual
role as observatory site, and Tahiti's harbors were surveyed.
Samoa and Fiji, however, were the expedition's primary map-
ping goals. Two of the fleet's vessels continued to Samoa and
completed a comprehensive survey of that entire island group
(Fig. 216), along with separate maps of the individual islands
and a chart of the harbor of Pago Pago (Fig. 217).
The expedition then stopped in Australia, where repairs were
performed on the ailing vessels before sailing south for Antarctica.
In contrast to Cook, who had disproved a southern continent at
any "usable" latitude, Wilkes knew that land lay far to the south
receive special funding. The project then entered a decade-long and attempted to survey parts of its coast. While meandering
period of delays and squabbles, and may not have been resuscitated through the icy fog, they came across the two vessels of the French
were it not for Edmund Fanning, the captain from Connecticut expedition of d'Urville. Winds prevented the latter from approach-
who rescued the Duff's missionary William Crook from his ing Wilkes's vessel, who misconstrued the snub as deliberate.
troubles in the Marquesas. Fanning is credited with several modest Fiji was their next jaunt. Wilkes set up a camp on the island
discoveries in the Pacific, and the 1833 account of his voyage of Ovalau, just 17 kilometers off the east coast of Viti Levu,
helped fuel interest in the Exploring Expedition project. which he judged to be in an advantageous position from which
A fleet of six ships finally sailed in August 1838 under Charles to measure angles between the many islands and peaks. Endur-
Wilkes, who before this assignment had been sent to England and ing trying conditions for the task, the crews of the Peacock and
the Continent to purchase chronometers and other instruments. Vincennes conducted surveys of the entire archipelago (Fig. 218).
Among their onboard library were the atlases from the voyages of In early July 1840, after a couple of months of the Fiji mapping
Duperrey, d'Urville, and Cook. Like Cook, Wilkes had already project, surveyors of both vessels met to tally their progress. The
proven his mapping expertise in surveys performed in the Atlantic allotted time, they realized, had been insufficient to chart the
Seaboard of North America. complex archipelago, so the decision had to be made whether to
New England mariners had a great stake in this project. The leave it unfinished, to the disappointment of American commerce,
East India Marine Society of Salem (Massachusetts), nucleus of or to cut the crew's rations by a third and stay longer than antici-
American commerce in the Pacific, was particularly anxious to pated. Rations were cut, the stay extended, and the charts of Fiji
have charts of Fiji, putting the matter thus: "The Feejee or Beetee completed—probably the greatest achievement of their projects
Islands, what is known of them? They were named but not visited in Oceania. Although the mapping of Fiji still had much to keep
by Captain Cook, and consist of sixty or more in number. Where surveyors busy—Natewa Bay, for example, is poorly formed—
shall we find a chart of this group, pointing out its harbors and comparison of the general chart in Fig. 218 to that of the extreme-
dangers? There are none to be found, for none exist! And yet have ly competent d'Urville (Fig. 210) will show the degree of mystery
we no trade there? We speak not for others, but for ourselves." that still surrounded the islands when Wilkes arrived, and the
This is not quite true, of course. Charts of Fiji had already been extent to which he improved it.
212 Early Mapping of the Pacific

ordered the destruction of villages in retaliation for the reported

death of a sailor from a whale ship.
Wilkes learned of the presence, in the eastern part of Fiji, of a
British ship which had damaged her rudder's pintle on one of the
archipelago's infamous hidden hazards. Three pintles were spared
from the Peacock for the endangered vessel, the Sulphur, which
was an exploring vessel like Wilkes's ships, under the command of
Edward Belcher. Charting these unseen dangers was, in fact, the
reason for Belcher's visit to Fiji. The urgency his instructions placed
on accurate soundings and the recording of the quality of the sea
bottom were as important as the precise mapping of the coastlines
themselves. With such common goals, Wilkes and Belcher then met
in mid-June 1840, comparing their progress and sharing data.
Hawaii offered a welcome change from their harsh life in Fiji.
While Wilkes surveyed and explored Hawaii, he sent two vessels
Above: Fig. 216. General map of Samoa. Below: Fig. 217. The harbor of Pago
Pago (Tutuila). US Exploring Expedition, ca. 1844. [Library of Congress] back to Samoa and one back to the Tuamotus, these to do further
hydrographic research.
The US Exploring Expedition's return was hardly the jubilant
Wilkes's mapping of Fiji cost both Fijian and American lives. reception afforded Cook, nor its memory as indelible. Lawsuits
Despite his government's instructions to show the "courtesy and began over various issues, such as Wilkes's having imposed punish-
kindness toward the natives which is understood and felt by all ments in excess of that permitted by code. Their charting of the
classes of mankind," Wilkes's impetuous temper escalated relatively southern continent was held in doubt, deemed a hoax by some.
minor incidents until two crew were murdered on the small island Wilkes found the public apathetic to his accomplishments. He
of Malolo, just west of Viti Levu. Wilkes had all canoes on the was reprimanded for relatively minor offenses, though never for
island destroyed, villages razed to the ground, many Fijians killed, the violence. Wilkes hid behind the flag. He insisted to a military
and others forced to grovel before the American "conquerors." court that the severity was "incumbent on me for the protection
Wilkes's mapping of Samoa was also marred by violence when he of commerce," and that by accusing him they were slandering the
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 213

Fig. 218. General map of Fiji composed from the surveys of Charles Wilkes and the United States Exploring Expedition, ca. 1844. [Lahaina Printsellers, Ltd]
Overleaf. Fig. 219. Thematic map recording data compiled from the reports of American whalers. Matthew Fontaine Maury, 1851. [Library of Congress]

country: "its honor, its glory, the untarnished lustre of its uncon- Thematic and Oceanographic Mapping
quered flag all have been assailed." That his gratuitous violence Whereas Wilkes's contributions lay in the actual original surveying,
was even an issue, however, reflects that such behavior was now the talents of another American, Matthew Fontaine Maury, lay in
becoming unacceptable among civilized nations. analyzing and interpreting data brought by such voyages. Maury,
The voluminous surveys brought back by the expedition were chief of the Depot of Charts of the US Navy, believed that the
carefully prepared and engraved on copper by private firms at mapping of Oceanographic and meteorological data would make
government expense, rather than the cheaper lithographic method ocean travel safer and faster. During the early 1840s—the peak of
on equipment owned by the government. Good engraving paper whaling activity in the tropical Pacific—he studied the logbooks
was difficult to find in the United States at this time. The paper of navy vessels to track wind data, and in 1848 published his first
was dampened before being impressed with the engraved plate, charts depicting wind currents. Three years later, he published a
and common paper tended to dry unevenly, shrinking or stretch- novel map (Fig. 219), showing the distribution of different species
ing more in one direction than another. So uneven was the drying of whales. Each species is identified by an iconic symbol. A whale
of the paper first used, wrote Wilkes, "that it made all our scales in outline with a single spout indicates the sperm whale, whereas
erroneous either in Latitude or Longitude." Like so much of the the block image with double spout is the right whale; a single spout
paper from that period, however, that used by Wilkes, despite his is a straggling sperm, double spout a straggling right.
care in choosing it, has not withstood the years well. By the mid-nineteenth century, every island of any significance
The Narrative of the expedition was first published in late had been discovered and mapped with reasonable accuracy. The sea
1844. At Wilkes's direction, and in contrast to what had become bottom, however, had not, and to this end in late 1872 the British
general convention, specific people were not credited with any vessel Challenger left Portsmouth for a monumental exploring
particular survey Although it was republished fourteen times expedition, visiting various ports in a now largely Westernized
through 1858, the editions were relatively small runs, and thus Pacific. The beginning of Oceanographic mapping was the
their new maps were poorly distributed. Challengers principal goal, being designed to pursue "whatever
216 Early Mapping of the Pacific

ftfli

researches might throw light on the physical, chemical, and bio- influence was as revolutionary as that of their forebears from the
logical conditions of the deep sea." To such ancient subaquatic previous half century. The Pacific had become crowded with
concerns as fishing areas and features affecting ship safety were islands. That a Kyoto mapmaker produced the world map illus-
added new demands, such as determining features on the ocean trated above (Fig. 220), shortly after the stream of great Pacific
floor that would affect the project of laying a cable between surveying enterprises concluded, is evidence of this; the proper
Australia and New Zealand. With this voyage the modern form of southwest Australia and the presence of the Bass Strait, for
exploration and mapping of the Pacific began. example, show that he was working from sources no more than a
Individually, none of the maps published with the original few decades old, yet the simple, almost naive nature of the map
accounts of early nineteenth-century Pacific voyages were as widely does not suggest that he would have sought out the latest data.
disseminated as those of Cook. In their totality, however, their Pacific whaling was already in decline before the United States'
 Surveys, Whalers, and Missionaries 217

<

AUSTRALIA

Left: Fig. 220. World Map, Kyoto, ca. 1850. Above: Fig. 2 2 1 . Label to a shipping
crate of the Johnston Fruit Co., 1917, boasting trans-Pacific routes. Below:
Fig. 222. Polynesian man aboard Wilkes's vessel, drawing by Alfred Agate of the
US Exploring Expedition, ca. 1840. [Naval Historical Foundation]

push to the setting sun gave her viable Pacific ports. Manifest Expeditions that explored the Pacific usually collected ethno-
destiny continued over the ocean to Hawaii, which she annexed graphic data about the shores they surveyed, such as the above
in 1898, and with the establishing of trading relations with Japan drawing by Alfred Agate, artist on the US Exploring Expedition,
and other far-flung Pacific nations, the Pacific became a vast trade of a Polynesian man on Wilkes's vessel (Fig. 222). At first, the maps
conduit. Hawaii became the pivot for trade between California and they drew lost importance as they were replaced by newer ones,
western Pacific shores. Thus, when the Johnston Fruit Company, while the ethnological records became more significant as they
a major lemon distributor during the first third of the twentieth became irreplaceable. With the passing of time, however, the maps
century, designed a label to identify its crates (Fig. 221), it symbol- that they and those before them created have themselves become
ically superimposed a lemon over a map of the ocean, its routes part of humankind's historical record, another link in a process that
refracting through Honolulu as if the lemon were a lens. began with shells arranged geographically on a new-found shore.
218 Early Mapping of the Pacific

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to the West Indies, London, 1792. 1770, from the Journals of Jean de Journal of the Brigantine Hope on a
Bougainville, Louis de (trans. Louis de Surville and Guillaume Labe, Hakluyt Voyage to the Northwest Coast of North
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Round the World. Performed by Order Who's Who in Pacific Navigation, MSS42952 LOC.
of His Most Christian Majesty, In the University of Hawaii Press, 1991. Joseph Ingraham's Journal of the
Years 1766, 1767, 1768, and 1769..., Eden, Richard, The Decades of the Newe Brigantine Hope on a Voyage to the
London, 1772. Worlde or West India, London, 1555 Northwest Coast of North America
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gations aux Terres Australes, 2 vols, Ellis, William, Polynesian Researches Jack-Hinton, Colin, The Search for
Paris, 1756. [1827-25], Charles E. Tuttle, 1969. the Islands of Solomon 1567—1838,
Bryan, E. H., Life in the Marshall Islands, Ferdon, Edwin N., Early Tahiti As the Oxford University Press, 1969.
Pacific Scientific Information Centre, Explorers Saw It 1767—1797, Univer- Keate, George, An Account of the Pelew
Honolulu, 1972. sity of Arizona Press, 1981. Islands, Situated in the Western Part
Byron, George Anson Lord, Voyage of Fitzpatrick, Gary L., The Early Mapping of the Pacific Ocean; Composed from
H.M.S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands, ofHawai'i, KPI Limited, 1987. the Journals and Communications of
in the years 1824-1825, London, 1826. Forrest, Thomas, A Voyage to New Guinea, Captain Henry Wilson, London, 1788.
Chapman, S., "Edmond Halley as Physical and the Moluccas, from Balambangan ... Koeman, Dr Ir C , Atlantes Neerlandici,
Geographer, and the Story of his during the Years 1774, 1775, and 1776, 5 vols, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,
Charts," Royal Astronomical Society Oc- Dublin, 1779. Amsterdam, 1970.
casional Notes, No. 9, London, 1941. Forster, Johann Reinhold, Observations Kotzebue, Otto von, A Voyage ofDiscovery
Cook, James (ed. J. C. Beaglehole), The made during a voyage round the world, in the South Sea and to Behring's Straits
Journals of Captain James Cook on his on physical geography, natural history, London, 1821.
Voyages of Discovery, 3 vols, Cambridge and ethic philosophy, London, 1778. A New Voyage Round the World in the
University Press, 1955-6. Fry, Howard T., Alexander Dalrymple and Years 1823-1826, London, 1830.
A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and the Expansion of the British Trade, Krusenstern, Adam J. Von, Voyage Round
Round the World. Performed in His University of Toronto Press, 1970. the World in the Years 1803, 1804,
Majesty s Ships the Resolution and Ad- Le Gobien, Charles, Histoire des Isles 1805, and 1806, London, 1813.
venture, in the Years 1772, 1773, 1774, Marianes, Nouvellement Converties a La Perouse, Jean-Francois Galaup de, A
and 1775..., 2 vols, London, 1777. la Religion Chrestienne, Paris, 1700. voyage round the world:... in the years
Cook, Capt. James and King, Captain Grattan, C. Hartley, The Southwest Pacific 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, by M.
James, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. to 1900, Uni. of Michigan Press, 1963. de La Peyrouse: To which are added:
Undertaken ...for Making Discoveries Hakluyt, Richard (ed. Richard David), A voyage ...by Don Antonio Maurelle:
in the Northern Hemisphere...., Hakluyt's Voyages, Houghton Mifflin and... discoveries of the late Captain
London, 1784. Company, 1981. G. Vancouver, London, 1798.
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Labillardiere, Jacques Julien Houton de, Munster, Sebastian/Richard Eden, A Suarez, Thomas, Early Mapping of
Voyage in search of La Perouse, per- treatyse of the newe Lndia, London, Southeast Asia, Periplus Editions,
formed by order of the Constituent 1553 (Readex Microprint, 1966). 1999.
Assembly, during the years 1791, Parks, George Bruner, Richard Hakluyt Swift, Jonathan, Travels into Several
1792, 1793, and 1794, London, and the English Voyages, American Remote Nations of the World, London,
1800 (Da Capo Press, 1971). Geographical Society Special 1735.
Lessa, William A., Drakes Island of Publication No. 10, 1928. Taylor, E. G. R., The Haven-Finding Art,
Thieves, University of Hawaii Press, Pennant, Thomas, The View of the Abelard-Schuman Limited, 1957.
1975. Malayan Lsles, New Holland, and the Thomas, Stephen D., The Last Navigator.
Levesque, Rodrigue, History of Micronesia, Spicy Lslands, Vol. IV, London, 1800. Henry Holt and Company, 1987.
A Collection of Source Documents: Pigafetta, Antonio (trans. Paula Spurlin Thornton, John, The English Pilot. The
Vol. 1, European Discovery (1992); Paige), The Voyage of Magellan, Third Book, London, 1703 (Theatrum
Vol. 2, Prelude to Conquest (1992); Prentice-Hall, 1969. Orbis Terrarum, 1970).
Vol. 3, First Real Contact 1596-1637 Pires, Tome (trans./ed. Armando Thrower, Norman, Maps and Civilization,
(1995); Vol. 10, Exploration of the Cortesao), Suma Oriental, Hakluyt Cartography on Culture and Society,
Caroline Elands (1997); Vol. 13, Failure Society, 1944 (Kraus, 1967). University of Chicago Press, 1996.
at UlithiAtoll(1999); Vol. 15, Mostly Polo, Marco (trans./annotated Henry (ed.), The CompleatPlattmaker,
Palau (2000); Vol. 17, Last Discoveries Yule, revd by Henri Cordier), The University of California Press, 1978.
(2001); Vol. 18, Russian Expeditions Travels of Marco Polo, London, 1920 (ed.), Sir Francis Drake and the
(2001). (Dover Publications, 1993). Famous Voyage, 1577-1580, University
Lisiansky, Uey,A Voyage Around the World Ptolemy, Claudius (trans./ed. Edward of California Press, 1984.
in the Years 1803, 4, 5, &6in the ship Luther Stevenson), The Geography, Tibbetts, G. R., A Study of the Arabic
Neva, London, 1814 (N. Israel, 1968). New York Public Library, 1932 Texts Containing Material on South-
Liitke, Frederic, Voyage Autor du Monde, (Dover Publications, 1991). East Asia, Published for the Royal
execute par order de Southeast Asia Ramusio, Giovanni Battisa, Delle naviga- Asiatic Society, London, 1979.
Majeste lEmpereur Nicolas 1st..., Paris, tioni et viaggi, Venice, 1550 and 1554 Tyache, Sarah, London Map-Sellers
1835 (Da Capo Press, 1971). (Vol. 1); 1556 (Vol. 3); 1559 (Vol. 2). 1660-1720, Map Collector Publi-
Ma Huan, Yong-yai Sheng-LanlThe Overall Rickman, John (?) [anonymous], Journal cations, 1978.
Survey of the Oceans Shores [1433], of Captain Cook's Last Voyage to the Vancouver, George, A voyage of discovery
Hakluyt Society, 1970 (White Lotus Pacific Ocean, London, 1781. to the North Pacific ocean, and round
Company Limited, 1997). Robertson, George (Intro. Oliver Warner), the world..., London, 1798.
Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius An Account of the Discovery of Tahiti Verner, Coolie and Skelton, R. A., Biblio-
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Viola, Herman J. (eds.), Magnificent Press, 2000. Wilkes, Charles, Narrative of the United
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dition, 1838-1842, Smithsonian Cortesao), The Book ofFrancisco Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842,
Institution Press, 1985. Rodrigues, Hakluyt Society, 1944 Philadelphia, 1844.
Marques, Alfredo Pinheiro, A Carto- (Kraus, 1967). Williams, Professor S. Wells (translation
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Martin, Henry Byam, The Polynesian pher of the East Indian Company Wilson, William, A Missionary Voyage to
Journal of Captain Henry Byam (1669-1701)," in Imago Mundi, the Southern Pacific Ocean, Performed
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Museum of Salem, 1981. Sarmiento De Gamboa, Pedro/Markham, Ship Duff, Commanded by Captain
Martin, John, An Account of the Natives Sir Clements, History of the Incas, James Wilson. Compiled from Journals
of the Tonga Lslands in the South Pacific Hakluyt Society, 1907 (Kraus, 1967). of the Officers and Missionaries...,
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communications of Mr. William Roggeveen, Oxford University Press, Wright, John Kirtland, The Geographi-
Mariner, several years resident in 1970. cal Lore of the Time of the Crusades,
those islands, Edinburgh, 1827. Schilder, G(inter, Australia Unveiled, American Geographical Society,
Motte, Benjamin, The Philosophical Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1976. Research Series No. 15, 1925.
Transactions From the Year MDCC Stommel, Henry, Lost Lslands: the Story Wroth, Lawrence O , The Early Carto-
(where Mr. Lowthorp ends) to the Year of Lslands That Have Vanished From graphy of the Pacific, Papers of the
MDCCXX. Abridgd and Disposd under Nautical Charts, University of British Bibliographical Society of America,
General Heads, London, 1721. Columbia Press, 1984. Vol. 38, No. 2, 1944.
220 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Index Behaim, Martin, 29, 37 Cavendish, Thomas, 66, 69

Challenger, 213, 216
Belcher, Edward, 212
Note: Numbers in italic refer to Figures. Bennett, Frederick, 205 Chamberlain, Levi, 165
Bering: Sea, 47; Strait, 47, 189 Chamisso, Adelbert, 191
Aa, Pieter Vander, 76 Bering, Vitus, 46, 47 Chamorros, 49, 179, 181, 181, 182
Abba Thulle, King, 178 Berlanga, Tomas de, 58 Chandia, Antonio de, 117
Abreu, Antonio de, 38, 39 Bernart, Luelen, 21 Chao Ju-kua, 26
Agate, Alfred, 9, 217, 217 Biblical place names, 61 Chatelain, Henri, 67, 104-5
Agnese, Battista, 50, 51 Bikini Atoll, 190 Cheng Ho, see Zheng He
Alaska, 170 Bishop, Charles, 188 China Sea, 51
Albuquerque, 38 Bismarck Archipelago, 16, 112, 168 Chinese, 26-7
Alexander, 36, 49 Blaeu, Willem, 58, 82-3, 108 Chou Ch'ii-fe, 26
Alexander, W. D., 164, 167 Bligh, William, 119, 122, 139, 157, 175, chronometers, 118, 129, 132, 134, 139,
America, 31, 35, 36, 37, 46, 47, 129; 199, 200, 208 158, 161, 169
maps, 49, 50, 58, 64, 65, 86 Bond, Essex Henry, 188 Chuuk, 181, 184, 186, 191-2, 7.97
Amsterdam Island, 102, 125, 134 Bora Bora, 114, 129, 139, 148, 205, 206 Clarke, George, 206
Anaa, 18-19 Borde, Jean, 169 Clement XI, Pope, 185
Andrews, Lorrin, 165 Bordone, Benedetto, 51, 54 Clerke, John, 137
Anian, 56-7, Strait, 46 Botany Bay, 78, 737, 132, 171 Cocos Island, 87, 92
Anson, George, 48, 69, 116, 117, 154 Bougainville, 171, 172 Colchero, Alonso Sanchez, 67
Antarctica, 47, 133, 134, 208, 209, 210, Bougainville, Louis Antoine de: anchor, Colom, Arnold, 16, 94
211 139; Samoa, 170, 171, 204; Solomons, Columbus, Bartolomeo, 36
Aouvea, 174, 205 172; Tahiti, 141-3, 206; Tuamotus, Columbus, Christopher, 29, 31
Apia, 116 124; voyage, 723, 124-5 Consag, Ferdinando, 107
Apian us, Peter, 7, 35 Bouvet, 133 Conti, Nicolo de, 29, 36, 58
Arab: maps, 28; seafarers, 27-8 Brobdingnag, 112, 114 Cook, James: America, 47; Australia, 132;
Arellano, Alonso de, 108, 181, 182 Brosses, Charles de, 25 Easter Island, 134; Hawaii, 47, 136,
Arnhem Land, 84, 85 Broughton, William, 159 139, 151, 154, 158; maps, 120-1,
Arrowsmith, Aaron, 177, 203 Brouwer, 84 123, 128, 131, 136, 144-5, 147, 151,
Ascension, Antonio de la, 107 Buache, Philippe, 47, 114, 115, 733, 135, 155; Marquesas, 74, 134-5, 194, 199;
Asia: maps, 31, 49 154, 171, 172 New Caledonia, 172; New Hebrides,
Ata, 102, 134 Buddhist cosmography, 28 124, 135-6; New Zealand, 130-1,
Atlantic Ocean, 31 Buka Island, 123, 171, 172, 206 133-4, 138, 776; Polynesian lang-
Atlantis, 28, 49 Bunting, Heinrich, 78, 79 uages, 17; scurvy, 88; Tahiti, 134, 135
Australia, 76, 78-9, 84, 86, 102, 103, Byron, George Anson, 140, 161 139, 146-9; Tasmania, 132, 137-8;
108, 112, 129, 131-2, 138, 174, 204, Byron, John, 117, 118, 118, 120-1 Tonga, 19, 25, 134, 138-9, 168-9,
206, 207, 211; maps, 71, 84, 85, 209; Tuamotus, 775; voyage: 1st, 111,
92-3, 103, 104-5, 172, 204 Cabot, Sebastian, 61 775, 129-32, 146-8; 2nd, 74, 129,
Australia del Espiritu Santo, 135 Cabri, Jean Baptiste, 201 132-6, 148-9; 3rd, 47, 129, 136-9,
Avachumbi, 61 Calensuan, 51 149, 151, 154, 175
California, 8, 106-7, 106, 107, 170; Gulf, Cook Islands, 17, 71, 134, 135, 138, 176
Baker, Joseph, 158 51, 100-1 Cook Strait, 131, 133
Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 36, 37 Campano, Giovanni, 29 Coppo, Pietro, 31
Balnibarbi, 113, 775 Cantova, Juan Antonio, 185, 186, 187, Coronelli, Vincenzo, 46, 98, 102, 73ft
Banie, 208 192 131
Banks, Joseph, 129, 131, 132, 132, 139, Cape Verde Islands, 29, 46 Corsali, Andrea, 65
147-8 Cape York Peninsula, 84, 85, 86, 131 Corso, Antonio, 180
Banks' Island, 131 Caribbean/China Sea, 30, 31 Cortes, Hernan, 51, 106
Barreto, Ysabel de, 71 Caroline Islands: children, 27; European cosmology, 21
Barros, 178 contact, 191-2, 206, 208; indigenous Crates of Mallos, 28
Bass, George, 138, 174 maps, 24-5; mapping, 179, 185-6, Cresques, Abraham, 9
Batavia, 78, 123, 125, 132; map, 125 187, 191, 204, 208; maps, 184, 185, Crook, William, 198, 199,211
Baudin, Nicolas-Thomas, 204 186-7, 189, 192, myth, 24-5 Crozet, Julien, 17
Bauman Islands, 115, 170 Carpentaria, 85, 86, 89, 130 Cysat, Renward, 58, 59
Bayly, William, 133 Carstenz, Jan, 84, 85
Beach, 77, 78, 79, 85, 103 Carteret, Philip, 117, 118-25, 171-4; Dalrymple, Alexander, 45, 77, 78, 98,
Beaufort, Sir Francis, 190 maps, 77:9, 726>-7, 722, 723, 725, 134-5, 138, 139
Beautemps-Beaupre, Charles Francois, 208 Dampier, William, 111-14, 174
172, 172, 173 Cassini, 129, 72^, 138, 146 Dana, James Dwight, 162-4
Beechey, Frederick William, 19, 722 Cattigara, 37, 36-7, 45, 49, 51 Dangerous Archipelago, 124
 Index 221

Dante, 28 Finau, King, 209 Hergest, Richard, 195

Darwin, Charles, 193, 205, 208, 210 Fine, Oronce, 36, 37, 38, 39, 46, 65, 87 Higgins, Jeremiah, 209
Davis, Edward, 75, 111, 113-14 Fisher, William, 109 Hilo, 157, 164, 167
Davis Land, 111, 113, 114, 115, 119, 169 Fitzroy, Robert, 210 Hitiaa, 141, 147
de Leth, 67, 71 Flinders, Matthew, 138, 174, 204 HivaOa, 70, 134, 194, 199
Defoe, Daniel, 112 Forrest, Thomas, 125, 126—7 Hokkaido, 56-7, 169, 170
Delano, Amasa, 178, 183 Forster, Johann Reinhold, 147, 148 Holbein, Hans, 35
Delisle, 47 French: chartmakers, 78; expeditions, Hornem, Lopo, 37, 40—1
Denison, J., 165 204-9 Hondius, Jodocus, 50, 67, 68, 87, 94,
d'Entrecasteaux, Antoine Raymond Joseph Freycinet, Henri, 204 108, 179; maps, 66, 67, 88
de Bruni, 171-5, 172, 208 Freycinet, Louis, 160, 191, 204-5, 204 Honolulu, 159, 160, 161, 164; maps,
Dibble, Sheldon, 166, 167 Friendly Islands, see Tonga 156, 158, 165
Diemen, Anthony van, 102 Fu-sang, 27 Honshu, 169
Diemens landt, 84, 102 Furneaux, Tobias, 132, 133 Hood, 135
Dillon, Peter, 171, 208 Horne Islands, 87, 92
Dixon, George, 157 Galapagos, 58, 69, 210 Horner, Dr, 158
Djurberg, Daniel, 176, 176-7 Gali, Francisco, 46 Houtman, Cornells de, 78
Doncker, Hendrick, 99, 103 Gallego, Hernan, 65-6, 94, 98, 102 Houtman, Frederick de, 85
Douglas, William, 167 Gama, Joao da, 47 Houyhnhnms Land, 113, 115
Drake, Francis, 66, 67-9, 85, 87, 107 Gambier Islands, 198,208 Hsu Fu, 26
du Val, Pierre, 67, 94, 96-7, 98, 104-5, Gastaldi, Giacomo, 37, 38, 46, 58, 86, Huahine, 129, 134, 135, 139, 147, 148
152-3, 154 178; maps, 42-3, 68, 179 Hudson, William, 191
Dublon, Manuel, 191 Gaytan, Juan, 154, 180 Hunter, John, 172
Dudley, Robert, 87, 88, 92, 108 Gerritsz, Hessel, 74, 82-3, 84, 94 Huttich, Johann, 85
Duff Islands, 74, 199, 201 Gilbert, Thomas, 188 Hwui Shin, 26, 27
Duperrey, Louis, 160-1, 189, 191, 192, Gilbert Islands, see Kiribati
205-7; maps, 160, 188, 190, 205 Gilolo, see Halmahera I. de los Tiburones, 60, 102
d'Urville, Dumont, 25, 192, 205-9, 211; Glareanus, Henricus, 35 Ibedul, King, 186
maps, 116, 141, 191, 192, 207', ships, globes, 29 Imangla, 55, 55, 58
208, 209 Glubbdubdrib, 113 Indian Ocean, 36, 37-8, 68, 78
Dutch: explorers, 108; mapmakers, 108 Gobien, Charles Ie, 69, 181, 182, 182 indigenous maps, 21, 184
Dutch East India Company (VOC), 46, Golovnin, Vasili, 161 Indonesia, 51, 108, 125, 126-7, 179
78, 84, 86, 87, 94, 98, 108, 114, 180 Goos, Peter, 102, 107, 107 Inebila, 55, 55, 58
Grand Cyclades, 124, 135 Ingraham, Joseph, 756; 157, 194-5, 195,
Easter Island, 17, 24, 26, 114, 134, 169, Great Barrier Reef, 125, 132, 176 196, 197
201, 203; map, 169; statues, 171 Green, Charles, 129, 131, 133 Irian Jaya, 79, 86
eclipses, 69, 107, 125, 136, 139, 140-1, Guam, 49, 50, 69, 179, 182, 183, 191, Isla de Sn. Francisco, 154
151, 154 208; maps, 48, 182 Island of Thieves, 68
Edwards, Edward, 176, 204 island of women, 55, 58, 58
Egmont, 119, 123, 130 Hack, William, 109, 110-11 Isle of Pines, 136, 172
Ella, Rodrigo de Santa, 61 Hakluyt, Richard, 51, 86, 87, 181
Ellis, William, 21 Halley, Edmund, 109, 111, 112-13, 210 Jacquinot, Charles-Hector, 208
Emerson, Ursula, 162—3, 165 Halmahera, 51, 52-3, 69, 125, 179 Jansson,Jan, 89, 94, 98, 108
Engano, 58 Harris, John, 198-9 Jansz, Willem, 84, 86
English: explorers, 117-19, 123; map Harrison, John, 118, 132, 139 Japan, 35, 46, 115, 179, charts, 27; maps,
trade, 108-9 Hartog, Dirck, 84 8,51,51,58,59
Eredia Godinho de, Manuel, 77, 78, 79, Hawaii: Byron, 161-2; Cook, 47, 136, Japanese: map, 216, 216-17; traders, 27
84 139, 151, 154, 158; discovery, Java, 51, 5 4 , 5 4 69
Escondido, P., 66 154-64; Dixon and Portlock, 157; Java-la-Grande, 52-3, 78-9
Espinosa, Gonzalo Gomez de, 178-9 Duperrey, 160-1; Freycinet, 160, 205; Jode, Cornelis de, 44, 46, 60, 62-3, 64,
Espiritu Santo, 76, 135 Ingraham, 157-8; Kotzebue, 158-60, 65, 66, 67, 78, 87
'Eua, 102, 134, 174 189, 203; Lisiansky, 158; maps, 94-5, Johnston, Charles, 203
151, 155, 156, 161, 164, 166, Johnston Fruit Company, 217, 217
Fanning, Edmund, 160, 199, 211 missionaries, 165-7; Perouse, 154, Juan Fernandez archipelago, 58, 64, 88,
FatuHiva, 70, 134 155, 157, 169-70; US annexation, 112, 113, 114, 118, 119, 134
Fatu Huku, 135 217; Vancouver, 158, 159; Wilkes,
Fearn, John, 188 162, 164, 212 Kaahumanu, Queen, 167
Fer, Nicolas de, 74, 77, 104-5, 135 Hawkesworth, John, 117-18, 119, 141; Kamamalu, Queen, 161
Fiji, 16, 17, 102, 138, 176, 199, 207-8, maps, 118, 119, 122, 128, 131, Kapihe, Chief, 161
211-12; maps, 200, 207, 213 176-7 Kauai, 151, 154, 155, 157, 159, 164, 165
222 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Kazvini, Zekeriya, 2 Magellan Strait, 45, 69, 87 missionaries, 20, 160, 165-7, 182-5, 18'
Keate, George, 183, 187 Malacca, 38 198-9
Kendrick, John, 157, 194 Malaspina, Alejandro, 47 Mohotane, 199
Kepler, 109 Maiden, Charles, 161, 162 Moll, Hermann, 111
Kerguelen, Admiral, 132 Malekula, 74, 135 Moluccas, 39, 65, 68, 76, 94, 178, 179,
Keulen, van, 94-5, 108 Maletur, 77, 103 205, 206
Kilauea, 15, 161, 162, 164 Mallet, Main, 77, 85, 86, 98, 102 Monachus, Franciscus, 37, 45, 87
Kilinailau group, 123, 171 Maluku, 52-3 Montanus, Arias, 79
King, James, 154, 157 Mangareva group, 198, 199, 208 Moorea, 119, 139, 147, 149, 149
King George's Island, 119, 140 Manua islands, 115 Motane, 70, 134
Kino, Eusebio Francisco, 107 Mao Yuanji, 26, 27 Moullard-Sanson, Pierre, 76
Kiribati, 118, 160, 178, 188, 188, 191 Maoris, 102, 130, 133 Muller, Gerhard Friedrich, 47
Klein, Paul, 104-5, 183-4, 184, 191 Maouna, 170-1, 204 Munster, Sebastian, 28, 35, 45, 50, 51,
knots, as measuring tool, 21, 24 Marchand, 195 55, 58, 87, 179; map, 49
Kosrae, 190, 191, 192 Mariana Islands, 17, 50, 69, 178, 179, Mururoa Atoll, 123
Kotzebue, Otto von, 17, 47, 150, 158-61, 181, 182-3, 205; maps, 56-7, 86, 98,
177, 189-90, 191, 203-4; maps, 156, 181 Nauru, 188
158, 188, 189, 202-3 Mariner, William, 209-10, 210-11 navigation aids, 23-5
Krusenstern, A. J. von, 47, 158, 159, 194, Marquesas, 17, 69-71, 74, 129, 134-5, Navigator Islands, 170
199, 201-3; maps, 156,202 148, 194-5, 195, 198-203, 208 Ndeni, 71, 74, 123, 172, 175, 206
Marshall, John (William), 188 Nendo, 71, 123, 172, 175
Ladrones, 68, 182 Marshall Islands, 17, 25, 178, 182, New Albion, 67, 69
Lahaina, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166 188-90, 7*^,203,204 New Britain, 17, 112, 123,208
Lahainaluna, 165 Martellus, Henricus, 35, 36 New Caledonia, 17, 129, 136, 172, 174,
Langenes, Barent, 64, 66, 66 Martin, Henry, 117, 149, 194 208
Langren, Hendrik van, 103 Martin, J., 209 New Cytheria, 143
Laputa, 113, 115 Martyr, Peter, 50, 87 New Georgia, 172
Lasso, Bartolomeu de, 180 Matavai Bay, 134, 140, 146, 147, 149 New Guinea, 51, 76-7, 84 86, 92, 94,
Ie Clerc, Jean, 87, 88, 94, 98 Mather, Cotton, 210 112, 132, 185; maps, 54, 56-7, 60,
Le Maire, Jacob, 88-9, 94, 98, 102, 109, Maui, 155, 155, 158, 160, 167 64-5, 65, 66, 70, 76, 77, 84, 85, 86,
134; maps, 87, 89, 94-5, 102, 130 MaunaKea, 115, 157, 160, 162, 164 89, 100-1, 104-5, 130, 180
Ledyard, John, 164 MaunaLoa, 154, 160, 162-4 New Hanover, 112, 119
Legazpi, 108, 181, 182 Maupiti, 114, 134, 150 New Hebrides, see Vanuatu
Leon, Ponce de, 31 Maurelle, Francisco Antonio, 168-70, New Holland, 131
Lesseps, Viscount de, 170 168, 176 New Ireland, 24, 94, 112, 119, 123, 124
Levasseur, 6-7, 193 Maurua, 129, 148 125, 174, 206
Li-yan-tcheou, 27 Maury, Matthew Fontaine, 213, 214-15 New South Wales, 132
Liholiho, King, 161, 190 McCluer Gulf, 86 New Zealand, 17, 94, 102-3, 129-31,
Lilliput, 112, 114 Melanesia, 25, 65 133, 138, 206, 207, 209; maps, 71,
Line Islands, 160 Melville, Herman, 146 98, 104-5, 128, 130, 202, 206
Linschoten, 8, 79, 85 Melville Island, 85 Nicolosi, 85
Lisiansky, Urey, 158, 201, 203 Mendana, Alvaro de, 61-6, 69-71, 74, Niihau, 151, 157, 165
Lituya Bay, 170 75, 102, 134-5, 171, 182, 192 Niue, 135, 176
Loaisa, Garcia de, 179 Mendoza y Gonzalez, Juan Antonio de, Nolin,J. B., 74, 75, 114, 135
London Missionary Society, 198 107, 108 North America, 67, 69
Loon, Johannes van, 90-1, 92-3, 102, Menzes, Jorge de, 51 northern Europe—Pacific sea route, 45
108 Menzies, Archibald, 164 Northwest passage: search for, 46, 107,
Lopes, Gregorio, 37, 40—1 Mercator, Gerard, 46, 50, 51, 55, 58, 64, 137, 139, 151,203
Lopez, Alonso, 182 85,87 Nuca Antara, 80-1, 84
Louisiade Archipelago, 174, 208, 209 Mercury transit, 109, 130 Nuku Hiva, 194, 199, 201-2, 209, 210
Loyalty group, 174, 208, 209 Mertho, Captain, 189 Nuyts, Pieter, 86, 113
Lucaantara, 78, 79, 84 Metellus, Johannes, 59
Lucach, 77, 85, 103 Micronesia, 17, 25, 55, 64, 117, 178-93; Oahu: Cook, 151, 154; Freycinet, 161;
Luggnagg, 113, 115 maps, 65, 67, 94-5, 117, 179 Ingraham, 157; Kotzebue, 159; map,
Liitke, Frederic, 25, 47, 192, 193, 193, Middelburg, 102, 134 162-3; missionaries, 165, 167;
204 Middleton, John, 210 Perouse, 154, 155; Vancouver, 158;
Midway Atoll, 167 Wilkes, 164
Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius, 28, 77 migrations, 15-21 Oceania, 16-17, 25, 114, 117, 176-7,
Magellan, Ferdinand, 37, 39, 45, 49-51, Mindanao, 117, 125, 172, 179, 186 195
86, 178-9, 181; map of voyage, 76 Miranda, Jose da Costa, 4—5 Odoric, Friar, 29, 36
 Index 223

Ophir, 61 Plato, 28 Rotuma, 176, 206

oral histories, 21 Pliny, 85 Ruscelli, Girolamo, 51, 54, 68
Ortelius, Abraham: Beach, 85; Buena Pobre, Juan, 182 Russian: expeditions, 199-204; explorers,
Vista, 66; maps, 8, 64, 65, 69, 113; Pohnpei, 21, 74, 182, 191, 192, 193; 47
Maris Pacifici, 36, 46, 178, 180; New children, 21; maps, 20, 193 Ruysch, Johann, 30, 31
Guinea, 54, 65, 76, 92; Pacific Ocean, Point Venus, 147, 148-9, 210, 211
36; Solomon Islands, 64, 66, 67; Pola, 170, 171 Saavedra, Alvaro de, 51, 179
Theatrum, 55, 58, 108; Tierra del Polo, Marco: Aniu, 46; Beach, 77, 78, 85, Sahul, 15
Fuego, 87 103; Bergia, 45; China Sea, 51; islands Saipan, 56-7, 183
Otaheite, 149 of men and women, 58; Japan, 29, 51, Sakhalin, 170
Otdia, 190, 204 51, 58; Lucach, 77, 85, 103; Nicobars, Samar, 183-4, 185
Ottens, Joshua, 111 54-5; Quinsay, 37; Tolman, 46 Samoa: Bougainville, 124; Cook, 138;
Ottens, Reinier, 111 Polynesia, 25, 70, 147; culture, 16; d'Urville, 208; Freycinet, 205;
Oyolava, 170, 171 people, 9, 19, 65, 217 Kotzebue, 203-4; maps, 116, 170,
Pomare II, King, 206 203, 212; Perouse, 170-1; Roggeveen,
Pacific Ocean: definition, 29; "false", Port Jackson, 132 115; settlement, 16, 17; Wilkes,
35-7; north-south limits, 45; original Portlock, Nathaniel, 157, 195 211-12
ocean concept, 15; patterns of early Portuguese explorers, 29-30, 38-9 Sandwich, Lord, 139
mapping, 35-7, 50, 51; regions, 25; Prado, Diego de, 76 Sandwich Islands, see Hawaii
settlement, 16-21 Prince William's Islands, 102, 125 Santa Cristina, 70
Pacific Ocean maps, 6-7, 13, 16, 22-3, Ptolemy, Claudius, 35, 36, 37, 38, 45, 50, Santa Cruz, 71, 74, 123, 172, 175, 206;
31, 34-5, 40-1, 50, 56-7, 65, 68, 70, 51,55,86 maps, 172, 173, 174, 208
71, 82-3, 88, 89, 90-1, 94-5, 98, PukaPuka, 5 0 , 7 1 , 88 Santiago, 67
100-1, 103, 104-5, 106, 108, 132, Purdy, 203 Sanudo, 58
205; east, 75; north, 8; 27, 44; 116, Pylstaart Island, 125, 134 Sanvitores, Diego Luis de, 182
152-3, 196, 201; northwest, 197; Sarmiento, Pedro, 36, 45, 61
south, 72-3, 96-7, 120-1, 123; Quiros, Pedro Fernandez de: discoveries, Savage Island, 135
southwest, 52-3, 67, 74, 76, 80-1, 84, 74, 76, 102, 104-5, 132, 134, 135, Savai'i, 170, 171
92-3, 180; west, 46, 54, 79, 87, 99, 182, 192; expeditions, 71, 74-7; Schadelijk Island, 114
109, 179 Marquesas, 17, 70, 194; Polynesia, 17, Scherer, Heinrich, 124
Padilla, Francisco, 185 18; Solomons, 70, 171, 172 Schoner, Johann, 31, 37, 65, 79
Pagan, 183 Schouten, Willem, 87, 88, 92, 94, 98,
Palau, 17, 68, 172, 178, 183, 184, 185, Raiatea, 129, 134, 135, 147, 148, 150 130
186-7, 199, 208 Ramsden, Jesse, 154 Sea of Japan, 170
Palawan, 51, 55 Ramusio, G. B., 46, 58, 65, 178, 179, Selkirk, Alexander, 112
Pangaea, 15 179, 180 Seller, John, 94, 98, 106, 109
Papeete, 141 Rangiroa, 89, 118 Seram, 86, 180
Parmentier brothers, 78 Read, Thomas, 193 Serrao, Francisco, 39
Parowroah, 149 Reef group, 176 Short, James, 146
Paulaho, King, 138 Refreshment Islands, 114 Shortland, John, 172
P'eng-lai Island, 26-7 Reilly, Franz Joh. Jos. von, 176-7 Smollett, Tobias, 113
Pennant, Thomas, 17 Reinel, Jorge, 37, 40-1 Snider, Antoine, 15
Peron, Francois, 204 Reinel, Pedro, 37, 40-1 Society Islands: Cook, 129, 134, 148,
Perouse, Jean-Francois Galaup de La, 24, Ribero, Diego, 39, 49 149, 151; Duperrey, 205; Kotzebue,
47, 154-7, 169-71, 204; maps, 155, Rickman, John, 154 150; maps, 25, 118, 129, 147;
168, 169, 170, 171 river ocean concept, 28, 28, 29 Roggeveen, 114; settlement, 17, 20;
Petri, Henricum, 54 Roberts, Edward, 201 Wallis, 119
Philip IV, King, 182 Roberts, Henry, 139 Solomon Islands: Bougainville, 124, 125,
Philippines, 51, 58, 61, 69, 76, 117, 170; Robertson, George, 21, 24, 140-1, 183 171; Buache, 171; Carteret, 123, 171;
maps, 98, 110-11, 117, 179, 187 Robinson Crusoe Island, 112 d'Entrecasteaux, 171-2, 174; d'Urville,
Piccinacoli, 65 Rodrigues, Francisco, 38, 39 208; maps, 56-7, 60, 64, 66, 67, 70,
Pickersgill, Richard, 130, 133, 148 Rodriguez, Esteban, 182 71, 74, 76, 84, 98, 100-1, 102, 103,
Pigafetta, Antonio, 37, 39-40, 48, 49-50, Rogers, Woodes, 111, 112 104-5, 124, 168, 206; Mendafia, 61,
58, 181 Roggeveen, Jacob, 17, 114-15, 134, 170, 69, 70, 71; settlement, 17; Surville,
Pilon, Abel, 210 171, 203, 205 171
Pinnock, 140-1, 142 Romanzov, Count, 189, 203 South America, 49, 67
Piron, Nicolas, 172, 175 Romero, Francisco Diaz, 117, 117 Southeast Asia, 35-8, 51; map, 109
Pitcairn Island, 119, 122 Rose Island, 205 southern hemisphere map, 133
Plancius, Petrus, 77, 85, 178, 180, 180, Rota, 48,49, 50, 183 Spanish: cosmographers, 39, 49; explorers,
181-2 Rotterdam Island, 102, 125 31
224 Early Mapping of the Pacific

Speed, John, 109 Tinian, 69, 183 Vaugondy, 171

Spilbergen, Joris, 87, 89, 94 Tompson, Felipe, 192 Vava'u, 138, 168-9, 171, 176, 209-10
Staaten Land, 88, 94 Tonga: Bligh, 176; Cook, 19, 25, 134, Vaz, Miracomo, 102
Staeten Landt, 102 138-9, 168; d'Entrecasteaux, 138, Velarde, Pedro Murillo, 117
Starbuck Island, 190 174; dancers, 137; double canoe, 18; Velasco, Juan Lopez de, 64, 179, 181
Stewart Island, 131 Duperrey, 206; d'Urville, 207; Le Venus, transit of, 109, U l , 129, 146-7
stick charts, 14, 25 Maire, 92, 134; maps, 134, 138, Vera Cruz, 76
Stingray Harbour, 132 210-11; Maurelle, 168-9; Perouse, Verdes L, 66
Stocklein, Joseph, 185, 185 171; settlement, 16, 17, 20; Tasman, Verne, Jules, 208
Sumatra map, 51 102, 134; Wilson, 198-9 Vernon, M., 143
Summer, William, 167 Tongataboo, wTongatapu Veron, Pierre Antoine, 125
Sunda Strait, 78, 132 Tongatapu, 102, 134, 139, 174, 198, 198, Vesconte, 58
Surville, Jean Francois Marie de, 45, 171, 199, 204, 207 Vigo, Goncalo de, 179
172 Torre, Bernardo de la, 8, 181 Villalobos, Ruy Lopez de, 51, 56-7, 61,
Swift, Jonathan, 112-13, 114, 115 Torres, Luis Vaez de, 74, 76-7, 86, 184, 107, 154, 180-1
Symmes, Jon, 210 189, 191 Vincendon-Dumoulin, C. A., 206, 208
Sype, Nicolas van, 68 Torres Strait, 85, 86, 132, 206, 208, 209 Viti Levu, 176, 200, 208
Toscanelli, Paolo, 29 Vizcaino, Sebastian, 107
Tahaa, 129, 148 Tramezzino, 79, 86 Vries, Maarten, 46
Tahiti: Bligh, 175-6; Bougainville, 124, Tuamotus: Bougainville, 124; Carteret,
141-6; Cook, 129, 134, 135, 139, 123; Cook, 129, 134, 135; Duperrey, Waikiki, 157, 159
146-9; Duperrey, 206; Fitzroy, 210; 206; Fitzroy, 210; Kotzebue, 203; Le Waldseemuller, Martin, 31, 32-3, 35
Kotzebue, 150, 203; maps, 118, 141, Maire, 89; maps, 118, 202-3; Quiros, Wales, William, 133, 135, 148
142, 143, 144-5, 146, 149, 150, 74; Roggeveen, 114; Wallis, 119; Wallis, Samuel, 117, 118-19, 134, 140-1
Melville, 146; settlement, 18; Surville, Wilkes, 211,212 143, 146; map of voyage, 120-1, 123
45; Wallis, 119, 140; Wilkes, 211; Tumai, King, 74 Wallis Island, 119
Wilson, 198 Tupai, 129-30 Walther, Andrew, 160
Tahuata, 70, 134, 135, 195, 199 Tupaia, 25, 124, 129, 132, 147, 148 Webber, John, 137
Taiwan, 109, 170 Tutuila, 115, 1 7 1 , 2 0 4 , 2 7 2 Wegemer Alfred, 15
Tallis,John, 13, 189 Tuvalu group, 65, 71 whale map, 213, 214-15
Tanna, 135, 136, 174 Wilcox, Mr., 160
Taprobana, 51, 78, 85-6 UaHuku, 194, 199 Wilkes, Charles, 162, 164, 191, 209,
Tasman, Abel: Australia, 85, 131; dis- UaPou, 194, 195, 199 211-13,273
coveries, 84, 94, 98, 102, 106, 130, Ulimaroa, 176-7 Wilson, Henry, 17, 24, 186-7, 187
silver islands, 46 Ulithi, 178, 179, 185 Wilson, James, 149, 149, 150, 198, 198,
Tasmania: Cook, 131, 133, 137-8; Ulloa, Francisco de, 51, 106 199, 199, 200, 201
d'Entrecasteaux, 172, 174; Furneaux, Umar bin Muzaffar Ibn al-Wardi, 28 Wilson, William, 198, 199
133; maps, 103, 104-5, 130, 131; Umboi Island, 112 Wit, Frederick de, 92-3, 103, 108
Tasman, 102 Unamuno, Pedro de, 46 Woleai, 86, 191
Tatton, Gabriel, 67, 69, 70, 109 Unfortunate Isles, 50, 60, 62-3, 88 world maps, 4-5, 32-3, 36, 37, 38, 39,
Taumako, 18, 74 United States Exploring Expedition, 42-3, 62-3, 66, 69, 77, 84, 89,
Teixeira, Joao, 47, 56-7, 72-3, 77, 80-1, 162, 164, 210-13 112-13, 124, 216-17; Islamic, 2, 28;
84, 182 Upolu, 170, 171 Jain, 28
Teixeira, Luis, 58 Urdaneta, Andres de, 178 Wotje, 188, 190, 204
Temoe, 198 Utupua, 172, 175 Wright, Edward, 67
Terra Australis: Fine, 37; maps, 54, 62-3, Uvea, 119 Wright-Molyneaux, 87
64, 77, 77, 78, 79, 85, 87, 89, 94, Wubei zhi charts, 26, 27
100-1, 103, 130, Ptolemy, 36; search Vahitahi, 118, 129
for, 45, 74, 113, 129, 130, 131, 133; Vaihiria Lake, 149, 150 Xavier, Father, 46
Swift, 112 Vaillant, Auguste-Nicolas, 159, 165
Tevai, 208 Vaitepiha Bay, 134 Yap, 17,68, 184, 185
Thai maps, 27, 109, 125 Valentijn, Francois, 108, 109 Yasawa group, 176, 200, 208
Thevenot, Melchisedech, 46, 47 Vancouver, George, 47, 158, 159, 164, Yezo, 56-7
Thevet, Andre, 55 165, 197, 203 Young, Nicholas, 130
Thijssen, Francois, 84 Vanikoro, 123, 172, 174, 175, 176, 208,
Thornton, John, 109 208 Zatta, Antonio, 27, 27, 74, 118, 119,
Tidore, 179 Vanua Levu, 208 120-1, 124, 128, 135
Tierra del Fuego, 45, 67, 78, 79, 86, Vanuatu: Bligh, 176; Bougainville, Zavalichine, Lt., 193
86-8, 94 124, 125, 135; Cook, 135, 136; Zheng He, 26, 27
Timor, 51, 176,205 d'Entrecasteaux, 174; maps, 76, 98; Zipangri, see Japan
Tinakula, 71, 74, 123, 172, 174, 175 Quiros, 76, 135 Zorzi, Alessandro, 31, 36, 45