Spanish priest's

journal "holds key to wall's identity"

The precise interpretation and translation of a single sentence in the journal of Fray Martin de Munilla is the key factor, in my opinion, in establishing the identity of the strange wall found at Big Bay, Espiritu Santo, in January.

FRAY MUNILLA, the father commissary of the Quiros expedition, is the only one of the seven known chroniclers of the expedition to leave more than a vague description of the fortress which the Spaniards built at Big Bay.

Fray Munilla said that some 60 men went ashore and built the fortress on May 9, 1606. His words, in Spanish, describing the erection of the building were: Y hizieron el lastre y la barraca fortaleziendola de muy buenas estacas y faxina terraplenada con sus troneras.

In an English translation of Fray Manilla’s journal, made by Father Celsus Kelly, OFM, and published by the Hakluyt Society last year, the foregoing sentence is rendered to read: Then they collected ballast and built a stockade, fortifying it with sturdy stakes, and earthworks with loop holes.

However, Father Kelly, in a letter from London, has since in formed me that—“as a working hypothesis” — the sentence in Manilla’s journal could also read; And they collected ballast (heavy stones or i even coral rocks ) and built a stockade, fortifying it with sturdy stakes and a rampart with its embrasures.

“I should mention,” Father Kelly said in his letter, “that else where I have pointed out that some passages [in Manilla’s journal] could be rendered in two or even three ways.”

Anyone with a knowledge of Spanish will readily agree with, and sympathise with, Father Kelly, for the key words in the Munilla passage— faxina terra plenada con sus troneras — are extraordinarily difficult to trans late into readily understood modern English.

The literal translation of the five words is: ramparted fascine with its embrasures (or loop holes).

The above sketch is my idea of what the Spaniards’ stockade at Big Bay would have looked like.

The guns would have been point ing inland, into the bush seen in the picture on p. 29. (The bush is NOT between the wall and the sea, as was erroneously stated in a caption in March PIM). —

Robert Lang Don.

• Father Celsus Kelly, OFM. Photo: "Catholic Weekly", Sydney.