Note 58-7 — CAPTAIN EDWARDS' REPORTS.

These islands had already been twice visited and named, and Cook, though he did not visit them, gives all their native names in his list of the islands composing the Friendly or Tonga Group. The honour of their discovery belongs to the Spanish pilot Maurelle, who sailed from Manila in 1781, without proper charts or instruments and almost without provisions for his long voyage to America. Reduced to desperate straits by famine, he sighted Fonua Lei, the northernmost of the Tonga Group, which he called Margoura, believing it to be one of the Solomon Islands. At Vavau he was liberally entertained by Bau or Poulaho, the Tui Tonga of Cook's visit four years before. La Pérouse passed close to the islands in December, 1787, but, consistent with his determination to hold no further intercourse with natives after the murder of M. de Langle, did not enter the harbour of Neiafu. Edwards had no account of either of these voyages. La Pérouse's journals were not published until 1797.

Fonua Lei was again destroyed by an eruption in 1846. The inhabitants who had plantations on it were removed to Vavau just in time.