Mendaña and quiros

1595 to 1596

After his first voyage in 1567, Mendaña kept petitioning the Spanish authorities to equip another expedition to exploit his discoveries in the Solomon Islands. At last, he was supplied with four ships and sailed from Callao on April 9, 1595, worked up the coast, and finally sailed from Payta on June 16. His chief pilot was Pedro Fernandez de Quiros. He sailed on a general westerly course and, on July 21, discovered the first of a page 8series of three islands, which he named Magdalena (Fatuhiva), Santa Christina (Tahuata), and Dominica (Hivaoa). The small, uninhabited islet of Motane, he named San Pedro. He called the group Las Islas de Marquesas de Mendoza after the viceroy of Peru. These islands formed the southern part of a group which was included in Mendaña's original name under the shorter title of the Marquesas. Thus though Mendaña's first voyage had been fruitless so far as Polynesia was concerned, his second made him the discoverer of the first important Polynesian group to be discovered. His description of the people and their culture is the first record of the ethnology of a Polynesian people.

Continuing his passage west along the same parallel of latitude, Mendaña passed north of other important islands in Polynesia. He saw four low, palm-studded, uninhabited islands which he named San Bernardo and, eight days later, an island which he called Solitaria. On September 7 he reached Santa Cruz in Melanesia. There his hopes of establishing a settlement met with great difficulty. Probably malaria was prevalent, for forty-seven of his men died within one month. And finally Mendaña himself died, without having reached his original discovery, the Solomons. Quiros took charge of the remnants, though Mendaña's widow was in nominal command as successor to her husband. They abandoned Santa Cruz and sailed to the Ladrones, thence to Manila, which was reached on February 10, 1596. Here, ten of his men died and four entered monastic orders to ensure a future less troubled than their past. After considerable time in the Philippines, Quiros took the long way home, by Urdaneta's northern route. He arrived at Acapulco on December 11, 1596.