When Pedro Fernandez de Quiros sailed from the coast of Peru, he followed nearly the same track until he reached the latitude of twenty-six degrees, when his companions, and especially his admiral, earnestly advised him to continue on until he reached forty degrees, as the most reasonable means of finding the continent which they had come in search of. This, for certain considerations he refused, being apprehensive of unfavourable weather, as he saw that the sun already began to decline towards the equinoctial; but in this refusal he made a great mistake. That which we have above related, is the most noticeable thing which has hitherto been effected in the shape of discovery in the southern hemisphere in the said longitude in the Pacific; and although, with the exception of the discovery made by the pilot Juan Fernandez, no satisfactory examination of the coast of the much-sought-for great southern continent has been effected, yet, doubtless, the aforesaid voyage failed but little of finding it, and it is either by negligence or by carelessness, and, it may be said, by the acknowledged blunders of some of the adventurers that it has not yet been discovered, for in their explorations they saw very great and manifest signs of a most extensive continent; and when Pedro Fernandez de Quiros reached the aforesaid twenty-six degrees they saw to the south very extensive and thick banks of clouds in the horizon, and other well known signs of mainland, and also a little islet, in which were various kinds of birds of very sweet song, which never sing nor are found at any great distance from the coast of the mainland. They discovered afterwards some islands, still very remote from the coast of Peru and Mexico, inhabited by races very different in feature, form, stature, colour, and language from the Indians of Peru and Mexico, which, apparently, could not have been peopled but from the coast of the southern continent. And in other islands which Pedro Fernandez de Quiros discovered in the same voyage, long before he discovered that of Taumaco, he stated that he saw some boys as fair and ruddy as Flemings, amongst the natives of the islands who were almost swarthy, and they said by signs that they brought those whites from a more southern latitude. Nearly the same thing was met with by the adelantado Alvaro de Mendaña, in some island which he discovered before he reached San Christobal and Santa Cruz, as in those which he called the four Marquesas de Mendoza and others, in which there were the same reasons for presuming that they could not have been peopled from the coasts of Peru and Mexico, but from the southern land; not only from the distance from those countries, but from the great difference of the natives from the Indians of Peru and Mexico, and because when questioned by signs they had no knowledge of any land towards Mexico or Peru, and all seemed to point towards the south.