Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/160

120 By the 4th April their brigantine was ready and launched, and on the 7th it left with Gallego, Ortega, eighteen soldiers, and twelve sailors, and went coasting, having frequent tussles with the natives, who seem to have been exactly then as they are now. On the 12th they came to the island of Malaita, where they bought a pig from the natives—where did they get their pigs from, I wonder? These natives had beads, the same as those at Puerto Viego in the province of Quito (now Ecuador) in South America. This was at Pala, now called Gala. The natives were naked, tattooed, had many villages, and they had many fights with them. Gallego says they “reddened their hair, eat human flesh, and have their towns built over the water as in Mexico”—it is exactly so to-day. A large island with a volcano was reached 19th April, and then a fine harbour, called by D'Urville in 1838 Astrolabe Harbour. They named the islands of Jorge (St. George Isle), and San Marcos (Choiseul Isle), and at Santa Isabel de Estrella found their other ships.

All leaving together 17th May, they came to Guadalcanar, set up a cross, and took possession for Spain, fought the natives, and record that they got “two hens and a cock.” Some of the soldiers were killed. They named and took San Christoval; then they visited and named nearly all the Solomon Islands. Gallego says somewhere that they thought they were at or near New Guinea, and goes on to say, “Inigo Ortez de Retes discovered it and no other; but Bernardo de la Torre did not see it;” but it was not New Guinea. Then they saw the Marshall Isles (as is supposed), the Isle of San Francisco (Wake's Isle), and saw by bits of rope and nails, etc., that a ship had been there before them—what ship, I wonder? They had terrible times, hoisted blankets for sails, and