The NEW HEBRIDES—so named by Captain Cook, who in 1773 first fully explored and described the whole of the group. As far back, however, as 1606, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros had landed on the largest and most northerly island of the group. He at once fancied it to be the great _Southern_ Continent, deemed to be essential to balance the great Continents of the North, and eagerly looked for both by sailors and men of science. He named the bay, _Vera Cruz_,—the river that flowed into it, _Jordan_,—and the city which he founded there, _New Jerusalem_. The land itself he called by the preposterous designation of _Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo_. In 1768 a French explorer, Bougainville, sailed round _Santo_, discovering that it was but an island, and through the _Straits_ that still bear his name; whereon, finding many islands all around, he re-baptized them _L’Archipel des Grandes Cyclades_. But Cook, being the first who sailed in and out amongst all the group, and put on record the most faithful descriptions and details, which to this hour remain generally authoritative, considered himself entitled to name them the _New Hebrides_; and history since has been well pleased to adopt his views, seeing, doubtless, the geographical analogy betwixt the multitudinous scattered isles and islets of the _old_ Hebrides and those of the _new_. From Santo in the north to Aneityum in the south, a distance of about 400 miles, there are scattered over the Ocean thirty islands, twenty being well inhabited, and eleven of them being of considerable size, from Aneityum, which is forty miles in circumference, to Santo, which measures seventy miles by forty. The Islands lie 1,000 miles to the North of New Zealand, 1,400 miles North-East from Sydney, 400 miles West of Fiji, and 200 East of New Caledonia. The population is now estimated at 70,000; but, in the early days of Missions, before Traders and Kanaka-collectors, and the new Epidemics of Civilization (!) had decimated them, their numbers were certainly three times greater. The general appearance of the Islands is that of a range of mountains bursting up out of the sea, clothed with forests, and severed from each other by deep valleys, through which the tides now flow. They are all volcanic in origin, but the lava has poured itself out over a bed of coral, and the mountains have reared themselves up on a coral base. The fires are still active on Tanna, Ambrym, and Polevi—the volcano on Tanna being now, as in the days of Cook, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, a far-shining light-house for the sailor, kindled by the finger of God Himself. The climate is moist and humid, with a thermometer seldom below 60° and seldom above 90° in the shade; their winter is called the Rainy Season, and their vegetation is tropical in its luxuriance.