who are great voyagers at the present day, and are easily distinguished by their Polynesian tongue, though where they lie near larger islands of Melanesian population, the appearance of Polynesians has been lost[1]. Many of these islands are easily identified, and lie away from the New Hebrides[2], but Quiros was led by his information to look for the large country of which he was in search towards the south, and he thought he found it in what he named Tierra Austral del Espiritu Santo. This island, now commonly known as Santo, has the native name of Marina. This was not the first land of the New Hebrides seen by Quiros; after having apparently seen the light of a volcano in the night, he found himself in the morning in view of three islands, one the present Aurora of the New Hebrides, and two belonging to the Banks' Islands, the volcanic cone, Merlav, called by him Nuestra Señora de la
- ↑ I have myself witnessed the arrival of eleven canoes from Tikopia among the Banks' Islands. The men said they had come to see the islands, and were hospitably received. One was shot at Ureparapara, and they departed. Shortly before this a canoe from Tikopia had been driven by the wind to Mota, and the men in her most kindly treated, and the same thing had happened before and has happened since. The difference in size, manner, language and dress between the Tikopians and Banks' Islanders was conspicuous. The true name is pretty certainly Chikopia, since the Mota people learnt Sikopia from their visitors; two Fijian islands are Cikobia = Thikombia.
- ↑ Chicayana is Sikaiana, Stewart Island; Guaytopo is Waitupu, Tracy Island, of the Ellice group; Taukalo is Tokelau; Nupani and Pileni are Reef Islands of Santa Cruz; Manicolo no doubt stands for Vanikoro. Bishop Patteson in 1866 found that the Reef Islanders of Santa Cruz visited Taumako and Tikopia. It is excusable at sight to take the Pouro of Quiros for Bauro in San Cristoval, but in my opinion the attempted identification must completely fail. In the first place, Pouro and Bauro are far from being the same in sound when the confusion of English spelling is got rid of; Quiros would never write ou for au. Secondly, Bauro is not and never was the native name of San Cristoval; it is a name picked up by Europeans, I believe by Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand, and adopted for European convenience. Gallego calls, and properly, a part only of the island Paubro. Thirdly, arrows with points in form of a knife (a fair description of some Lepers' Island arrows) are wholly out of place in the Solomon Islands. Fourthly, the certain identifications of the islands named do not lead in that direction. In the same way, when it is understood that the name of the island in the Malay Archipelago is Buru, in Dutch spelling Boeroe, there can remain very little ground for identifying it with either Bauro or Bulotu, in French spelling Bourotou.
