Even while in Manila, Quiros seems to have determined on a return to the Islands; he begged de Morga to keep the existence of the Marquesas secret ‘until his Majesty be informed and order what is most convenient for his service’, since their central position in that South Sea would enable the English to do much harm should they hear of them and settle.^[49] Back in Peru by June 1597, he tried to get a ship from the Viceroy Velasco, who (naturally, given the record) set a- 133 -precedent for future dealings with Quiros by hedging. At his suggestion Quiros went to Spain to put his plans to the Court; he visited Rome as a pilgrim in Holy Year, 1600, and secured the support of the Pope (in a personal audience), of the Spanish Ambassador to the Holy See, and of leading mathematicians and cosmographers, who were impressed by his navigational skills. His holy design may have been implanted in his mind by the unforgettable sight of the young Marquesan, so beautiful and yet damned; but if he arrived in Rome as a man with a mission, it was here that he became a man possessed, and his possession held him through humiliating failure, grinding poverty, and the sickness of hope ever deferred, until death ‘saved him from further frustration and humiliation and the Spanish authorities from further inconvenience’.^[50]

In 1603 Quiros obtained the royal authorisation, the instructions to the Viceroy of Peru being couched in usually strong terms.^[51] There was some opposition from Doña Isabel's new husband, who considered himself Governor of the Solomons in succession to Mendaña, but this was smoothed over on Quiros's assurance that they were not in his program. He was given two ships, the San Pedro y San Pablo as flag and another San Pedro as almiranta, with a zabra or launch for inshore work; the complement of 250 to 300 people, including six Franciscans, was provisioned for a year, with seeds and animals for a colony. But, as so often, the staff structure seems almost calculated to ensure conflict in the command. There was certainly prejudice against Quiros as a Portuguese. The almirante, Luis Vaez de Torres, was stout-hearted, competent, and loyal, though without great respect for his leader; but the reluctant Chief Pilot, Juan Ochoa de Bilboa, may have been a trouble-maker, though Brett Hilder implies that the trouble he made was merely his correct stand against Quiros in the dispute over the distance sailed. As for Don Diego de Prado y Tovar, as his style implies the most exalted personage aboard, he was a gentleman-volunteer with some hopes of succession to the command—perhaps even the Viceroy's nomination as such—and it is difficult to find in his own doctored account the virtues that H. N. Stevens ascribes to this ‘much-maligned man’: he convicts himself of malice, disloyalty, and an unscrupulous determination to exploit his ambiguous status. He forgot that, in the long run at least, ‘Malice to be effective should be concealed’.^[52]

There were very reasonable doubts in Lima as to the advisability of launching new colonies which would be difficult to support; the fleet's accountant, Iturbe, later alleged that Quiros shouted in the streets that the new Viceroy, the Conde de Monterey, was obstructing the intentions of the Council of State and the Pope, and it is possible that Ochoa and Prado were to some extent the Viceroy's watchdogs; on the other hand Monterey wrote a month before sailing to ask Quiros, in most friendly terms, for a progress report, and it was not until after his failure that Quiros blamed it on the delay of ten weeks in starting, and that in turn on the Viceroy.^[53] Vagueness and secrecy as to objectives probably contributed to the unease; but the real aim was to find a great Terra Australis beyond but fairly near the discoveries of 1568 and 1595: the Marquesas were- 134 -well populated by a more or less civil people who could not have come from New Spain or Peru, still less from the western shores of the South Sea. Terra Australis failing, they would make for Santa Cruz and explore New Guinea, apparently facing the risk of unknown lee shores and, should New Guinea not be an island, of embayment. If the Southland were not found, the return would be by the East Indies and so round the world, which was politically practicable since the union with Portugal in 1580.^[54]

The course was to be westsouthwest to 30°S, then in zigzags between 10 and 20°S, with Santa Cruz as the destination if no land were found, and the rendezvous in case of separation. The fleet left Callao on 21 December 1605, and by 22 January 1606 was in 26°S, when Quiros abruptly changed course; but Torres, Prado, Ochoa, and another pilot were for pressing on, alleging the usual promising cloud-banks. They sailed in a generally northwesterly direction until 19 February, when they were in 10°20′S, sighting on the way the isolated Ducie and Henderson Islands and several of the Tuamotus;^[55] at the most promising of these, ‘La Convercion de San Pablo’ (Hao, a large atoll, 50km long) the people were friendly and landings were made. Quiros wished for a longer stay, though these were hardly the millions of whose salvation he dreamt; but he was ill and Ochoa disregarded his instructions. They now turned west for Santa Cruz, coming to an island which Quiros identified with Mendaña's San Bernardo (Pukapuka) but which was in fact Caroline. On 2 March they found a small well-populated island, covered with coconut palms, generally identified as Rakahanga in the Northern Cooks. The people were defiant, and there were martial passages, but also some amorous ones. Once more Quiros was dazzled by the physical beauty of the Islanders, and from his description Fray Juan da Torquemada in 1615 gave the island the most generally used Spanish name, ‘Gente Hermosa’, the beautiful people; but Quiros himself characteristically called it ‘La Peregrina’, the pilgrim, and Torres more realistically ‘La Matanza’, the killing.^[56]

Long before this the inevitable murmurings had begun, abetted by Ochoa, and were not mollified by Quiros's well-meant lectures to the people on the evils of gaming, even if winnings were devoted to the souls in Purgatory, and the advantages of using the time on their hands to learn the three Rs, martial arts, and the use of the spheres. His temper was failing, and he hoisted a block to the yard-arm, in terrorem. But he had to admit, even to himself, that the voyage was dragging. Although, as Wallis says, nobody had yet had more experience of the South Pacific, the wind régime was not known. Even had they sailed in early October, not late December, they would still have been too late to take advantage of the winter extension of the Southeast Trades to the north, and they were now entering, in March, an area where monsoonal winds from the northwest prevail from December to April—they were running only ten leagues a day, instead of the twenty-seven of August-September 1595.^[57]

On 25 March, Easter Eve, Quiros called a council, and discontent came to a head. Ochoa pointed out that they had been sailing for ninety-four days, against- 135 -sixty-nine from Lima to Santa Cruz in 1595, and there was no sign of land; by this reckoning they had come 2300 leagues. Quiros applied various corrections, making much play with the fact that Ochoa's experience was merely coastal, and said that he had overestimated by 600 leagues: this would put them 1600–1700 leagues from Peru and well east of Santa Cruz. Actually Quiros had himself underestimated by about 600 leagues. Torres and the Portuguese pilot de Leza were also much closer to the truth than Quiros—about 2000 leagues to Taumako—but allowed themselves to be overborne. As far as Gente Hermosa the general estimates were not wildly out; the errors piled up as they passed out of the region where the Trades are steady even in winter. Quiros had his way: Ochoa was deposed and transferred to the almiranta, but the snake was scotched, not killed.

Water was short, despite the use of a condenser which Quiros rated too highly, and it was with great relief that, on 7 April, they sighted an island higher and more promising than the atolls so far visited. This was Taumako, under 150km northeast of Santa Cruz; Quiros was apparently running about half a degree north of the correct course for that island. The people here were friendly, with fine canoes, apparently knowing but disapproving of cannibalism; wood, water, and provisions were plentiful, and harmony was scarcely marred by the kidnapping of four young men for the salvation of their souls and their potential value as interpreters—factors barely distinguishable in the Spanish scheme of things. The chief, Tumai, was especially cordial; he told them of over sixty islands (some of them possibly as far away as Fiji or Tonga) and, ‘by signs with fire’, that the volcano seen in 1595 was five days to the west, and Santa Cruz could be seen from it. Obviously he had heard about arquebuses, and Quiros tried to explain away Malope's murder.

Santa Cruz was now in reach, but it was not the mainland of Terra Australis, it might be considered as Doña Isabel's territory, and to Quiros its memories were doubtless hateful; so on 18 April they headed southeast, with the tail of the monsoon, for the great land of ‘Manicolo’ of which they had heard at Taumako.^[58] On 24 April the ships rounded Tikopia, where three of the men taken at Taumako escaped by swimming. Passing through the Banks Islands, the northmost New Hebridean group, they came on 1 May 1606, the day of SS Philip and James, to a great mountainous land, to Quiros the end of the quest: La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo. Or perhaps indeed ‘La Australia ….’^[59]

Espíritu Santo retains the name that Quiros gave it, the largest (3885km2) and most diversified of the New Hebrides, where a bizarre Anglo-French Condo-minium, an old-style land-grabbing colonialism, and nativistic movements such as Nagriamel are trying to come to grips with the twentieth century. To Quiros, the problem of bringing the islands into the seventeenth century was sublimely simple: the New Jerusalem (such and no less was his name for the colony) would be devoted to the propaganda of the Faith and the welfare, material but first of all moral, of the natives.

- 136 -

The history of the New Jerusalem was a phantasmagoria: Quiros was now in the grip of a religious mania. It began realistically enough with the exploration by Torres of the great bay, still called St Philip and St James, in which they found themselves: a fine fertile land, well-timbered and well-watered, with a river, the Jordan, which in Quiros's eyes was as great as the Guadalquivir at Seville and hence proof of a land of continental size, though others were sceptical of this. There was a good port, named Vera Cruz; but nowhere suitable to build bergantins for coastal exploration. The land was well peopled by jealously separate tribes; but the people were not the golden youth of the Marquesas and Gente Hermosa.

They came out in canoes, with bows ready, and Torres's idea of an embassy was a whiff of arquebus-shot. This was meant to terrify, and it did. In the next few days there were occasional very wary meetings and exchanges; but when, a week after their arrival, Torres led a reconnaissance in some force, a great crowd blocked their way. Its leaders drew a line on the ground and indicated that both sides should lay down their arms—to their cost, says the pilot Leza, this tribe knew nothing of the arquebus—but to Torres this was an insolence, and he advanced across the line. The first death may have been by impatience or accident—Quiros tries to put a good face on it—and then a hard combat began. It could have only one ending; but that meant also the end of any hope of saving souls for Christ, and he admitted sadly that his great intention was now ‘but a sound’.^[60]

Quiros was saddened but not deterred. A church was built of boughs and plantains, and on Pentecost Day, 14 May, he took possession of the land, as far as the Pole, in the names of the Trinity, Jesus, St Francis, John of God, and King Philip III. He hardly deserves the scorn poured on him for the creation of ‘Ministries’ when he was in fact setting up the standard Spanish municipality with the appropriate officers and magistrates, though thirty-four of one sort and another seems an excessive number. As Fray Martin de Munilla, the leader of the Franciscans, puts it, ‘all the offices, which a well organised city should have’ were distributed; and on normal Spanish form the early appointment of a Registrar of Mines was a very reasonable precaution. But this relative common sense was overlain by the trappings of the Order of the Holy Ghost which Quiros instituted, a bizarre medley of baroque chivalry and religiosity, dedicated, in Prado's words, ‘to defend the Indians from their enemies and from the others who might wish to injure them, and other absurdities [inpertinencias] …’. Fray Martin (an old experienced man, in general very reserved about these enthusiasms) demurred at wearing the blue cross which was the badge of the Order—this would be against the Franciscan Rule—and overheard Quiros complaining of this to himself in words ‘which could not be set down with ink on paper’. But the taffeta crosses were distributed to all—

Even the aged Fray Martin was satirical about the marvellous ‘diversity of knights … negro-knights and Indian-knights and knights who were knight-knights’.^[61] It is clear that Quiros's sense of reality, and his command over himself, were breaking down.

Prado claims to have attacked Quiros directly in the most insolent terms:

Quiros should consider that he was dealing not with Indians but with Spaniards, some of whom had begged in the Ronda hills gun in hand, and ‘those from the mud of Lisbon were just the same; look out for yourself …’. That this mutinous speech was made to Quiros before his friends may very well be doubted; but the feelings expressed must have been widespread.^[62] In 1595 Quiros had carried such things off by his recognised superiority as a pilot (which now, with better competition, was not so evident) and a patient evasiveness; but he was now in sole command, there was no arbitrary Doña Isabel to provide the cover of higher authority, and he seems to have taken refuge in a nervous breakdown. On 25 May, Corpus Christi was celebrated with much festivity, though some thought it an artificial and precarious pomp, since the Spaniards were so few and the Indians so many; but Quiros and Fray Martin considered it a strikingly auspicious asseveration of the Faith. That same evening Quiros walked a league inland, past the already sprouting gardens he had planted, and on his return casually announced that since they stood little chance against native hostility, they would leave next day and visit the islands to windward.…^[63]

Astonishing as this sudden decision must have been, there seems to have been no discussion. Obviously Quiros was overwrought, but probably by now hardly anyone had confidence either in the settlement or in the commander, and Prado's point was well taken—no gold or pearls had been found, only hostile Indians. So the second European colony in the South Seas endured a month, half the span of its predecessor. What followed for Quiros was anticlimax, both immediately and over the years; for Torres, an outstanding achievement.

The departure was delayed to allow the people to catch fish, and when they started on 28–9 May they were forced back by a resultant epidemic of fish-poisoning, though nobody died. Finally they sailed again on 8 June, but met strong southeasterly winds. Quiros decided to return and build a fort and a bergantin, waiting until the seasonal wind régime could be determined. The almiranta and the launch made the port of Vera Cruz, but the capitana apparently could not work up the bay, or at least the pilots so claimed. It was- 138 -a confusing situation, and the accounts are confused; the true reasons for the ensuing separation on the night of 11 June are not likely ever to be ascertained.^[64] Prado said confidently that there was a mutiny on Quiros's ship; but he was on the almiranta, having transferred probably at Taumako, and the wish is rather too obviously father to the thought for much credence to be given to his statement, even if he were in general a more reliable witness. But even if there were no mutiny, there was a breakdown in command: clearly Quiros had lost his grip and was ill mentally if not physically; the pilots must have been in effective control, and they decided that the ship could not safely beat back to windward. Quiros was left to revolve distractedly the causes of his failure—untrustworthy subordinates, the ten weeks' delay in sailing at Callao, the ‘half hour of time’ in the Bay which robbed him of so great an enterprise.

On the capitana, the first thought seems to have been to make for Santa Cruz, forgetting that it was presumably dropped as a rendezvous by the decision to turn southwest from Taumako; but there was a strong feeling that they should make for Guam or New Spain, though Iturbe made a formal protest against giving over the search for new lands. Quiros was doubtful about making for Santa Cruz: they might easily miss the island and then, unable to beat back east, be faced with the old spectre of embayment on some unknown lee shore of New Guinea. They bore generally north, seeing a sail, undoubtedly native; Iturbe was bitterly critical of the failure to follow it, which indeed would probably have brought them to Santa Cruz within hours. On 21 June they were in the latitude of Santa Cruz, but there was no sign of land, and they might be either east or west of it. Quiros, now somewhat recovered, had reasoned objections to making for either Guam and the Philippines or for New Spain: at this season the westerly vendavales would render it hazardous, if not impossible, to make Manila, and the way to Acapulco was very long, water and food were short, and it might not be the right season to cross the Equator. In council, some still argued for the Philippines—they could recoup expenses with the silk and porcelain of China—but at last all agreed for Acapulco, Iturbe apparently under duress. Like Mendaña, Quiros wearily acquiesced, with the face-saving proviso that if they found promising islands, they should build a launch and explore; if not, they should reconsider when they struck the Acapulco-Manila Galleon track in the latitude of Guam. He consoled himself, rather lamely: other expeditions had been totally lost, he had laid a good foundation, Torres might make further discoveries, and it was all in the Lord's will. …^[65] He made his own testament, a rambling pathetic plaint against the greed and cruelty of men.

They did find one island, but it was only an atoll, Butaritari or the adjacent Little Makin in the northern Gilberts, and after reaching 38°N and suffering the accustomed privations (but only Fray Martin died, at 80) reached Navidad and four weeks later, on 23 November 1606, Acapulco. Thence Quiros went to Mexico and eventually to Spain, to wear his life out in the sad effort to rekindle the dead flame of his mission.