[21]. M. de Brosses says of New Guinea: “C’est une longue isle, ou presqu’ isle, si elle touche à la Nouvelle Hollande.” Navigations aux Terres Australes, tom. i. p. 434.
[22]. “Le triste état où nous étions réduits, ne nous permettoit de chercher en faisant route a l’ouest, un passage au sud de la Nouvelle Guinée, qui nous frayât par le Golfe de la Carpenterie une route nouvelle & courte aux iles Moluques. Rien n’étoit à la vérité plus problématique que l’existence de ce passage.” Voyage autour du Monde, p. 259.
[23]. Hawkesworth, vol. iii. p. 660.
[24]. Hawkesworth, vol. i. p. 563.
[25]. The position of the Solomon Islands, Mendana’s celebrated discovery, will no longer remain a matter in debate amongst geographers, Mr. Dalrymple having, on the most satisfactory evidence, proved, that they are the cluster of islands which comprizes what has since been called New Britain, New Ireland, &c. The great light thrown on that cluster by Captain Carteret’s discovery, is a strong confirmation of this. See Mr. Dalrymple’s Collection of Voyages, vol. i. p. 16-21.
[26]. It must be observed, however, that Monsieur le Monier, in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences for 1776, pleads for the existence of Cape Circumcision, seen by Bouvet in 1738, which our English navigator sought for in vain, and supposes to have been only an island of ice. Mr. Wales, in a paper read before the Royal Society, very forcibly replied to M. le Monier’s objections; and the attack having been repeated, he has drawn up a more extended defence of this part of Captain Cook’s Journal, which he hath very obligingly communicated, and is here inserted.
Arguments, tending to prove that Captain Cook sought for Cape Circumcision under the proper Meridian; and that the objections which have been made to his conduct, in this respect, are not well founded.
In the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris for 1776, printed in 1779, M. Le Monier has made some remarks with a design to show that Captain Cook sought the land, usually called Cape Circumcision, in a wrong place; and that, instead of looking for it under the meridian of 91⁄2° or 10° of east longitude, he ought to have looked for it under a meridian which is only 3°, or 31⁄2° to the eastward of the meridian of Greenwich; and consequently that this land may exist, notwithstanding all that has yet been done to find it. M. Le Monier has also two additional Memoirs on the same subject, in the volume for 1779, occasioned, as it appears, by some objections which have been made to his former Memoir before the Academy. For some reason or other, the Academy has not thought proper to print the objections which have been made to M. Le Monier’s hypothesis; nor has he been particular enough in his two Memoirs which reply to them, to enable me to say of what importance the objections are. I can only gather, that they contain some exceptions to the quantity by which M. Le Monier asserts the variation alters in 10° of longitude, under the parallel of 54° south; and which, I conceive, has little to do in the dispute.
Whether the land, usually called Cape Circumcision, exists or not, is a point of small importance to geography; as the most strenuous asserters of its existence must allow it to be a very inconsiderable island, and of no use. This, therefore, is not in itself a matter worthy of dispute; but in asserting this, M. Le Monier has, and I am sorry to observe it, with some asperity too, particularly in his second Memoir, endeavoured to censure the judgment and conduct of Captain Cook, whose memory I have every reason to revere, as well as the judgment of those who were with him; and, on this account, I cannot help feeling myself called on to explain the motives which induced Captain Cook to place no dependence on the arguments now adduced by M. Le Monier in support of his supposition; and which, M. Le Monier must know, were not unattended to at that time, from what the Captain has said, p. 236. Vol. II. of his account of the voyage. And it may be proper to observe here, that what fell from Captain Cook on this subject, was to show that this circumstance was then attended to, and not to throw blame on M. Bouvet, for whose memory and abilities Captain Cook entertained great respect: nor is it incompatible with the utmost respect, for a man to have a favourable opinion of his own labours; or to endeavour to show why he thinks the disagreement between them and those of another person, when there is one, does not arise from an error committed by himself. There could, therefore, be no occasion for M. Le Monier to express himself as he has done in several parts of his second Memoir.
The substance of M. Le Monier’s argument is this. In 1739, when M. Bouvet’s discovery is supposed to have been made, the methods for determining the longitude of a ship at sea were very defective; and, of course, the longitude of any land which happened accidentally to be seen by one, was equally uncertain. On a presumption that this was the case with respect to Cape Circumcision, M. Le Monier enquires into the quantity of the variation of the magnetic needle, observed by M. Bouvet at that place, and also into observations of the same kind, made at other places in the neighbourhood of it, about the same time, as well as both before and since. And by comparing these observations together, he concludes, that at the time when Captain Cook was in these seas, the variation of the needle at Cape Circumcision must have been 10° westerly: whereas, in the most westerly point of Captain Cook’s track, where he was sufficiently near the parallel of 54° south, to have seen land situated in it, the variation was 131⁄2° westerly. This difference of 31⁄2°, in the variation, answers to about 7° of longitude, in this part of the parallel of 54° south: and by so much did Captain Cook fall in with this parallel to the eastward of what he ought to have done to see the land in question. “Hence (M. Le Monier infers), that it is not surprising the British navigator should not find Cape Circumcision under a meridian which is 281⁄2° to the eastward of Ferro, when it is really situated under a meridian which is but 211⁄2° to the eastward of it.”