Men Who Have Made the Empire

by George Chetwynd Griffith

Meanwhile the realised dream of El Dorado had been replaced in men’s minds by another, even more vast, shadowy, and splendid. This was the dream of the Great Southern Continent, and in this imagination revelled and ran riot. Grave scientists, too, demonstrated beyond all doubt that there must be such a land far away to the south since how, without it as a counterpoise to the continents of the north, was the rolling world to be kept in equilibrium?

So they took it for granted, laid it down upon the maps, and wrote glowing descriptions of the varieties of climate, the splendour of scenery, the wealth of treasures and the strange peoples and animals that it must of necessity contain. Above all, it would be a new El Dorado which would not be under the control of Spain.

What more could men want, unless indeed it was the actual discovery of the Terra Incognita Australis? This was the new world of which Cook was to be the Columbus. Others had seen parts of it just as others had seen parts of America before the great Genoese reached the West Indies, but he was the man who was to do the work of putting its existence beyond all doubt.

The Royal Society found that there would be a transit of Venus in the year 1769, and that it would be best observed from some point in the great Southern Ocean, say Amsterdam Island or the Marquesas Group, lately discovered by the Dutch and Portuguese, and as the result of representations made to the King, an expedition was set on foot to carry out suitable persons to observe it. Of this expedition James Cook, raised from the rank of master to that of lieutenant, was placed in command. On his own recommendation the ship chosen for the purpose was the Endeavour, a Whitby-built craft of 370 tons, broad of bow and stern and fairly light of draft, and built for strength and endurance rather than speed.

She sailed, carrying a complement all told of eighty-five men, from Plymouth on August 26, 1768, which as Cook’s latest biographer happily remarks, was a Friday, and the starting-day of what was, all things considered, the most successful voyage of discovery ever made. Just before she sailed Captain Wallace had come back bringing the news of the discovery of Otaheite, otherwise known as Tahiti, and as this island was considered a more favourable position, Captain Cook, as we may now fairly call him, was ordered to proceed there first.

It is of course utterly out of the question to attempt any connected account even of one voyage round the world, let alone three, within such limits as these, therefore I cannot do better than let the great navigator describe his achievements, as he actually did, in three modest paragraphs:

“I endeavoured to make a direct course to Otaheite” (this was after he had crossed the Atlantic and doubled the Horn, which doubling, by the way, took thirty-three days), “and in part succeeded, but I made no discovery till I got within the Tropic, where I fell in with Lagoon Island, The Groups, Verde Island, Chain Island, and on the 13th of April arrived at Otaheite, where I remained three months, during which time the observations on the transit were taken.

“I then left it, discovered and visited the Society Islands and Ohetoroa; thence proceeded to the south till I arrived in latitude 40°22 south, longitude 147°29 east, then on the 6th of October, fell in with the east side of New Zealand.

“I continued exploring the coast of this country till the 31st of March, 1770, when I quitted it and proceeded to New Holland; and having surveyed the eastern coast of that vast country, which part had never before been visited, I passed between its northern extremity and New Guinea, and landed on the latter, touched at the island of Savu, Batavia, Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena, and arrived in England on the 2nd of July, 1771.”

I have seldom come across such a masterpiece of eloquent simplicity as this, but then, of course, Cook’s voyages were made before the days of the lecture-exploiter and the Age of Booms. There is, however, one remark that may be made on it. What Cook calls New Holland we call Australia, and Botany Bay, the first point he touched at, is hard by Port Jackson, on the flowery shores of which now stands the lovely capital of New South Wales. Terra Incognita Australis was unknown no longer, but the days when it was to prove itself even more golden than El Dorado were yet distant nearly a hundred years.