Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

230 FALKLAND ISLANDS. even the trifling distinction of discovering the Falklands, when it is evident that he could not have seen them ? * On the 14th of August 1592, John Davis, vs^ho sailed with Cavendish on his second voyage, but separated from him in May 1592, discovered the islands now called Falkland. In Mr. John Jane''s relation of Davis's voyage (Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 846), there is the following simple, but distinct account of this dis- covery : " Aug. 14, 1792. We were driven in among certain isles, never before discovered by any known relation, lying fifty leagues or better from the shore, east and northerly from the Strait" (of Magalhaens). At this time Davis was striving to enter the Strait of Magal- hasns, but had been long at sea, and driven far by tempests. His bearing is correct, though the distance (by estimation only) is too small. In 1683-4, Dampier and Cowley saw three islands in lat. 51° to 51° 20' S., wliich they (correctly) supposed to be those seen and named by Sebald de Weert. However, the editor of Cow- ley's narrative, one William Hack, published a diflPerent lati- tude for the land they saw, and called it Pepys Island, in com- pliment to the then Secretary of the Admiralty, intending that it should be supposed a new discovery. The false latitude given by Hack was 47° S. : in his drawing of the island he did not omit the insertion of an Admiralty Bay and a Secretary Point. Hawkins sailed along the northern shores of these islands in 1594, and he, ignorant of Davis's discovery, named them Haw- kins's Maiden Land. His account appearing first, and promi- nently, before the public, procured for them the name by which they were known until Strong, in 1690, sailed through and anchored in the channel which he named Falkland Sound. The Welfare's journal, written by Strong, is in the British Museum, together with Observations made during a South Sea Voyage, written by Richard Simson, who sailed in the • Could the constructor of the chart, published at Rome in 1508, have been misinformed, owing to a mistake of 5 for 3 (50 for 30)? Such errors occur frequently in modern compilations.