ABSTRACT
On July 2, 1774, Captain James Cook charted a southern outlier, Vatoa, which he called Turtle Island. He had met Fijians in Tonga, where he learned of their home's existence, but he had chosen not to make it an object of his explorations, a decision that puzzled fellow officer George Gilbert. Cook may have been the first to call the archipelago "Fiji," a corruption of its indigenous name, "Viti."
