Stamp Story—No. 68 Inca Legend Led Him To Solomon Islands

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 8

Stamp Story—No. 68 Inca Legend Led Him To Solomon Islands

(By

KEN ANTHONY]

BEHIND this stamp lies the story of the most curious of all the great voyages of discovery. Alvaro de Mendana, whose portrait appears on the left, was a Spaniard who set out from Peru in November, 1567, with an expedition of two ships—having received the command, apparently, mainly because he happened to be the Viceroy’s nephew. After an 80 days’ voyage he and his company became the first white men to set eyes on the Solomon Islands.

They discovered all the principal islands of the group, including Guadalcanal, which became the scene of fierce fighting during the Second World War. But while the other great voyages of exploration of the time had such tremendous impact on world affairs, Mendana’s discoveries were ignored. And it was almost 200 years before another European expedition reached the Solomons.

The reason was simple enough. The Spanish had been spurred on by Inca legends of a great continent far out in the Pacific, where thq inhabitants wore clothes of gold and precious stones. When it became clear that

there was no ready profit in the Solomons, they lost interest—and the records of the voyage lay for centuries lost and forgotten in Spanish archives.

Mendana is one of the tragic figures of history. It took him 27 years to obtain command of another expedition, and when in 1595 he finally sailed, hoping to find the islands again, he reached only the Santa Cruz group, 300 miles to the east. There he tried to form a settlement —but he was faced with dissension among the Spaniards and attacks from

hostile natives, and the colony was doomed to failure. Fever took a heavy toll of lives, and Mendana himself was among those who died, leaving the ffw survivors to struggle on to the Philippines. In 1956 the explorer was honoured by the 5s stamp illustrated here.

How the islands received their romantic name of Solomon is a mystery. But it is generally supposed that the Spaniards hoped to find they were the islands from which King Solomon obtained his gold. By the nineteenth Century, in sad contrast, the islands had become a hunting ground for slave-raiders from Australia. To stop this traffic, a British protectorate was declared in 1893.—(Central Press Features, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.)