Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/166

126 having the least idea they were the Solomons, as has since been proved.

In 1790 Dalrymple, in his Historical Collection of Voyages, declared that New Britain, discovered by Dampier, and the lost Solomons were one and the same. Captain Cook also believed this. King Louis XVI. of France in 1785 ordered La Perouse to go out and decide the question, but his expedition came to disaster and he perished. Then D'Entrecasteaux, in search of La Perouse, visited these isles, but did not guess they were the Solomons. It was Dumont d'Urville who in 1838 established their identity. Then came traders and missionaries to be killed, and in 1851 the yacht Wanderer, with her owner, Mr. Boyd, went cruising among them, but Boyd was killed and the yacht eventually wrecked at Port Macquarie in Australia.

Even now these mysterious isles are unexplored, and almost uninhabited save for the head-hunting cannibal savages who worry the traders. And where is the gold? No, I am afraid Solomon's Ophir was not here, but was, after all, in Australia; and that Cardinal Moran is right as to its being the Great Land of Quiros, but that there is some confusion as to what places that explorer is referring to.

This is no doubt all very boring, but it is not to me, for I seem to see those gallant little ships of long ago sailing and tacking amidst this wonderland of beautiful isles, which to-day are almost as they were then, and in most cases are unchanged.

I wonder if there are any boys, real boys, left now who ever read about such things and desire to emulate them? I once lived much near a “crammer's,” where scores of boys—men, they called themselves—were preparing for their ex-