No communication with the native inhabitants was here accomplished, but at four little flat, cocoanut-covered islets, named after Torres, were the head-quarters of an English dealer in cocoa-nut oil.  The native race were Maori-speaking, but their intercourse with sailors had given them a knowledge of the worst part of the English language, and as usual it was mournfully plain how much harm our countrymen instil.

The next group, sighted on the 17th of August, had already a remarkable history, to which Patteson refers in his journal, with no foreboding of the association those reefs and bays were to acquire for him, and far more through him.

Alvaro de Mendana had, in 1567, gone forth from Peru on a voyage of discovery in the Pacific, and had then found, and named, most of the Solomon Isles.  Grera and Bauro owed their names of Guadalcanar and San Cristoval to him.  In 1594, he obtained permission to found a colony on San Cristoval, and set forth with his wife and four ships.  But the Bauro people were spared that grievous misfortune of a Spanish settlement; Mendana missed his way, blundered into the Marquesas first, and then came upon a cluster of islands, one large and beautiful, two small, and one a volcano in full action.

He called the large island Santa Cruz, and fancied the natives of the same race he had seen in Bauro, but they knew nothing of the language he had learnt there, and though courteous at first, presently discharged their arrows.  However, he found a beautiful harbour on the other side of the island, and a friendly and dignified old chief called Malope, who in South Sea fashion exchanged names and presents with him.  Mendana and his wife Dona Ysabel seem to have wished to be on good terms with the natives, and taught them to sign the cross, and say amigos, and they proceeded to found their intended city, but neither Mendana nor Malope could restrain their followers; there were musket-shots on one side and arrow-shots on the other, and at last, the chief Malope himself fell into the hands of some Spanish soldiers, who murdered him.  Mendana punished them with death; but his own health was fast failing, he died in a few weeks, and his widow deserted the intended city, and returned home with the colonists, having probably bequeathed to the island a distrust of white men.

All this was in Patteson’s mind, as he shows by his journal, as the lovely scenery of Santa Cruz rose on him.  The people came out in canoes with quantities of yams and taro, of which they knew the full value; but the numbers were so large that no ‘quiet work’ could be done, and there was little to be done but to admire their costume, armlets, necklaces, plates of mother-of-pearl, but no nose ornaments.  They had strips of a kind of cloth, woven of reed, and elaborate varieties of head-gear, some plastering their hair white with coral lime, others yellow, others red; others had shaved half the head with no better implement than a sharp shell, and others had produced two lines of bristles, like hogs’ manes, on a shaven crown.  Their decorations made a great sensation among the Solomon Islanders, who made offers of exchange of necklaces, &c.