The Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neyra (1541-1595) discovered the Solomon and Marquesas islands. The voyages of Mendaña and his associates in search of new conquests to the south ended the Spanish phase of the Age of Discovery.

Born in Saragossa, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neyra was the nephew of an appointee to the viceroyalty of Peru. Mendaña was put in charge of an expedition to the South Pacific which sailed from Callao, Peru, late in 1567. With him went Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, an adventurer whose campaign for the conquest of the mythical Southern Continent (also called Terra Australis, although it had no precise relationship to present-day Australia) produced this expedition.

Behind the mission lay generations of European speculation and dreaming. Ptolemy's Geography, rediscovered by Europeans in the 15th century, had pointed to the existence of a...