(Vol. viii., p. 6.)
MR. WARDEN will find this question discussed by La Perouse (English 8vo.
edit., vol. ii. ch. 6.), who concludes unhesitatingly that the Sandwich
group is identical with a cluster of islands discovered by the Spanish
navigator Gaetan in 1542, and by him named "The King's Islands." These the
Spaniard placed in the tenth, although the Sandwich Islands are near the
twentieth, degree of north latitude, which La Perouse believed was a mere
clerical error. The difference in longitude, sixteen or seventeen degrees,
he ascribed to the imperfect means of determination possessed by the early
navigators, and to their ignorance of the currents of the Pacific.
Allowing for the mistake in latitude, the King's Islands are evidently the
same as those found on some old charts, about the nineteenth and twentieth
degrees of north latitude, under the names of _La Mesa_, _Los Mayos_, and
_La Disgraciada_; which Capt. Dixon, as well as La Perouse, sought for in
vain in the longitude assigned to them. They appear to have been introduced
into the {109} English and French charts from that found in the galleon
taken by Commodore Anson, and of which a copy is given in the account of
his voyage. Cook, or Lieutenant Roberts, the compiler of the charts to his
third voyage, retained them; and La Perouse was the first to erase them
from the map. There can, indeed, be little doubt of their identity with the
Sandwich Islands. But although Cook was not actually the first European who
had visited those islands, to him rightly belongs all the glory of their
discovery. Forgotten by the Spaniards, misplaced on the chart a thousand
miles too far to the eastward, and unapproached for 240 years, their
existence utterly unknown and unsuspected, Cook was, to all intents and
purposes, their real discoverer.