Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

—380 AUSTRALASIA.little more than nominal, and thousands of natives " engaged " to work in remoteplaces have perished of despair and hardships. Some German writers haveadvocated the establishment of a convict settlement in Melanesia. The islands inDampier Strait, occupying a central position between the New Guinea coast andthe northern archipelagoes, have been mentioned as the most convenient localityfor this purpose.A table of the chief North Melanesian islands, with their extent and estimatedpopulation, is given in the Appendix.II.South Melaxesi.\ :Santa-Cruz and New Hebrides.These two insular chains, although evidently belonging to the same geologicalsystem as the Solomons, are not disposed quite in the same direction, their longitudinalaxis running north-north-west and south-south-east. The two clusterscomprise some fifty isles and islets, besides countless reefs, and a few groups scatteredover the eastern waters on the highways leading to Fiji and Samoa. AltogetherSanta-Cruz and the New Hebrides, with the more remote Tikopia andAnuda, have a collective area estimated at from 5,000 to 5,500 square miles, witha total pojmlation approximately computed at about seventy thousand souls.The Santa-Cruz Archipelago was discovered in 1595 by Alonzo de Mendana,during the unsuccessful expedition undertaken to rediscover the Solomon groupvisited by him twenty-eight years previously. His companion, Queiros, whenexploring the same waters in 1606, was the iirst to sight the New Hebrides.Casting anchor in a bay on the coast of Espiritu-Santo, he supposed he hadreached the Australian continent, and accordingly gave to this " mother of somany islands " the name of Australia. It was in this island of Merena, orEspiritu-Santo, that he founded the "New Jerusalem," the city whence the truefaith was to be spread over all the scattered lands of the Pacific Ocean. ButQueiros never returned to this region, which remained unvisited for a himdredand fifty years till the time of Bougainville. But the very name of the " GreatCyclades," given to the New Hebrides by this navigator, shows that he made nosystematic survey of this archipelago, which is disposed not in circles but inchains.In 1774, six years after Bougainville, Cook visited the same group, which hestudied more in detail, and to which he gave the name of the Scotch Islands, whichhas since been maintained in geographical nomenclature. After Cook's visit thecoasts of the central islands still remained to be surveyed, and some more remotegroups to be discovered. In 1789, Bligh, driven from his shij) by the mutineersof the Bounty, and compelled to make his way across more than half of thePacific, had the good fortune to come upon the Banks Islands, lying to thenorth of the New Hebrides. The previous year Laperouse had navigated the\same parts of the ocean ; but he never returned to announce his discoveries.His vessel was wrecked on a shoal off Vanikoro, the southernmost memberof the Santa-Cruz group, though the scene of the disaster remained unknown until