ed. The females
were beautiful, with agreeable features and long black hair; they wore
dresses of fine matting. When the Spaniards landed, they were met by men
and women in procession, with tambourines and festal songs. These islands
abounded in cocoanuts and other vegetable productions.

From the Good Gardens Islands they set out again towards New Spain.

On the 9th of October, 1529, Saavedra died; and the next in command,
vainly attempting to make headway in an easterly direction, returned once
more to the Spice Islands.

The remnant of Saavedra's expedition reached Spain, by way of the Cape of
Good Hope and Lisbon, seven years later, in 1536.

According to Galvano, the Portuguese historian, Saavedra's discoveries in
1529 were more extensive than in 1528. He says the Spaniards coasted
along the country of the _Papuas_ for five hundred leagues, and found the
coast clean and of good anchorage.

The year that witnessed the return from the Spice Islands of the
survivors of Saavedra's expedition, 1536, witnessed also the sailing of
another fleet sent out from New Spain by Fernand Cortez to discover in
the same waters.

It consisted of two ships commanded by Grijalva and Alvarado.

The account of this voyage of discovery is very vague, and the various
writers on the subject do not entirely agree. This is due, perhaps, to
the fact that Alvarado abandoned the enterprise from the start, and went
to the conquest of Quito, in Peru, leaving the sole command to Grijalva.

It appears certain, however, that Grijalva visited many islands on the
north coast of New Guinea, and one, in particular, called _Isla de los
Crespos_, Island of the Frizzly Heads, at the entrance of Geelvinck Bay,
near which a mutiny occurred, and Grijalva was murdered by his revolted
crew.

His ship was wrecked, and the expedition came to an end, a few of the
survivors reaching the Spice Islands in 1539.

Most of the names given during the course of the exploration are
difficult to locate.

Besides the various place-names mentioned by Galvano, _Ostrich Point_,
the _Struis Hoek_ of later Dutch charts, is, perhaps, a reminiscence of
this untimely voyage.

A casoar, or cassowary, would, of course, be called an ostrich, and here
we have for the first time in history a picturesque description of that
Australasian bird.

Galvano's translator says: "There is heere a bird as bigge as a crane,
and bigger; he flieth not, nor hath any wings wherewith to fl