The discovery of the islands began with Magellan's voyage in 1520, when he found the Ladrones, but it was not until Mendafia's expedition in 1567 that any of the large groups became known to Europeans. Mendafia also discovered the Solomon Islands. Finding gold in use among the natives, he concluded that he had found the Ophir of Scripture and named the islands after King Solomon. He made the mistake of charting them in the wrong longitude, with the result that for a long time the islands were lost and geographers, doubt ing their existence, omitted them from the maps. Mendafia himself could not find them on a second voyage in 1595, but he then dis covered the Marquesas and one of the Union group. These, again, were °lost° until redis covered in 1769 by the French navigator Sur ville. Quiros, formerly pilot to Mendafia, dis covered Tahiti and the northern of the New Hebrides in 1606. Ten years later, Schouten and Le Maire, Dutch navigators, discovered the most northerly islands of the Tonga group and several small Polynesian atolls, but they missed the main groups of Tonga and Fiji. These were left for Tasman (q.v.) to find some 26 years later. Van Diemen, the Dutch governor at Batavia, sent out an expedition under Tas man in 1642 with momentous results, for not only were the remainder of the Tonga and Fiji groups discovered, besides numerous• other islands, but also New Zealand, Tasmania and the great continent of Australia. French and English navigators led in discoveries during the 18th century. Wallis discovered the island that now bears his name in 1767 and De Bou gainville discovered the Louisiades and the main islands of the Samoan group in 1768. The British geographer, Dalrymple (1737-1808), concluded that there must be a vast southern continent stretching from Australia to the South Pole. To test this theory Captain Cook's famous expedition was sent out by the ad miralty in 1772. Though he naturally failed to find the continent which did not exist, Cook discovered the Raratongan group (Cook's Islands), Savage Island, the Loyalty Islands and the Sandwich group (Hawaii), though it ap pears from native tradition that a shipwrecked European crew had been washed ashore at Hawaii some 50 years before. The French government despatched two frigates in 1785 under the command of the Count de la Perouse (q.v.) to pursue scientific discovery in the South Seas. On 26 Jan. 1788 La Perouse entered Botany Bay and handed the English governor there a package of papers to be sent to France. He set sail again on 15 March, after which the two vessels were lost to human ken. The papers duly reached their destination; the National Assembly published them and sent a naval expedition under D'Entrecasteaux to search for La Perouse and his ships. On this voyage the D'Entrecasteaux group of islands on the eastern extremity of New Guinea were discovered. Forty years after the disap pearance of La Perouse an Irishman, Peter Dillon, landed at Vanikoro, an island of the Santa Cruz group, and found the relics of the La Perouse expedition — but no survivors. D'Entrecasteaux might have found and saved them had he sailed further south. The last had died three years before Dillon's visit.
At the dawn of the 19th century Europeans were living on most of the large islands, mainly deserters from passing ships. The London Missionary Society sent out a number of ar tisan missionaries in 1799 to Tonga, Tahiti and the Marquesas. The mission to Tahiti flourished,- the two others were subsequently abandoned. About that time whaling-ships be gan to frequent the South Seas and from this era dates the real colonization of the islands by white men. Unfortunately, however, the frequent deserters from the crews of these ves sels were not a desirable type of settlers, so that the natives acquired their first knowledge of Europeans from the worst specimens of the race. A stream of real immigration began about 1850 through the influx of white traders and planters. The 16th century of Polynesian his tory belongs to the Spaniards; the 17th to the Dutch; the 18th to the English, and the 19th to the traders, whalers and missionaries of all nations. See MAORIS; MELANESIA; MICRONESIA;
MYTHOLOGY, and the islands under their separate heads; also POLYNESIANS.
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