Let us, however, do justice to these beginnings of discovery. To the Dutch, we must, at least ascribe the merit of being our harbingers, though we afterward went beyond them in the road they had first ventured to tread. And with what success his Majesty’s ships have, in their repeated voyages, penetrated into the obscurest recesses of the South Pacific Ocean, will appear from the following enumeration of their various and very extensive operations, which have drawn up the veil that had hitherto been thrown over the geography of so great a proportion of the globe.

1. The several lands, of which any account had been given, as seen by any of the preceding navigators, Spanish or Dutch, have been carefully looked for; and most of them (at least such as seemed to be of any consequence) found out and visited; and not visited in a cursory manner, but every means used to correct former mistakes, and to supply former deficiencies, by making accurate inquiries ashore, and taking skilful surveys of their coasts, by sailing round them. Who has not heard, or read, of the boasted Tierra Australia del Espiritu Santo of Quiros? But its bold pretensions to be a part of a southern continent, could not stand Captain Cook’s examination, who sailed round it, and assigned it its true position and moderate bounds, in the Archipelago of the New Hebrides.[[12]]

2. Besides perfecting many of the discoveries of their predecessors, our late navigators have enriched geographical knowledge with a long catalogue of their own. The Pacific Ocean, within the South tropic, repeatedly traversed, in every direction, was found to swarm with a seemingly endless profusion of habitable spots of land. Islands, scattered through the amazing space of near fourscore degrees of longitude, separated at various distances, or grouped in numerous clusters, have, at their approach, as it were, started into existence; and such ample accounts have been brought home concerning them and their inhabitants, as may serve every useful purpose of inquiry; and, to use Captain Cook’s words, who bore so considerable a share in those discoveries, have left little more to be done in that part.[[13]]

3. Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, had each of them contributed toward increasing our knowledge of the islands that exist in the Pacific Ocean, within the limits of the southern tropic; but how far that ocean reached to the west, what lands bounded it on that side, and the connection of those lands with the discoveries of former navigators, was still the reproach of geographers, and remained absolutely unknown, till Captain Cook, during his first voyage in 1770[[14]], brought back the most satisfactory decision of this important question. With a wonderful perseverance, and consummate skill, amidst an uncommon combination of perplexities and dangers, he traced this coast near two thousand miles from the 38° of South latitude, cross the tropic, to its northern extremity, within 101⁄2° of the equinoctial, where it was found to join the lands already explored by the Dutch, in several voyages from their Asiatic settlements, and to which they have given the name of New Holland. Those discoveries made in the last century, before Tasman’s voyage, had traced the north and the west coasts of this land; and Captain Cook, by his extensive operations on its east side, left little to be done toward completing the full circuit of it. Between Cape Hicks, in latitude 38°, where his examination of this coast began, and that part of Van Diemen’s Land, from whence Tasman took his departure, was not above fifty-five leagues. It was highly probable, therefore, that they were connected; though Captain Cook cautiously says, that he could not determine whether his New South Wales, that is, the East Coast of New Holland, joins to Van Diemen’s Land, or no.[[15]] But what was thus left undetermined by the operations of his first voyage, was, in the course of his second, soon cleared up; Captain Furneaux, in the Adventure, during his separation from the Resolution (a fortunate separation as it thus turned out) in 1773, having explored Van Diemen’s Land, from its southern point, along the east coast, far beyond Tasman’s station, and on to the latitude 38°, where Captain Cook’s examination of it in 1770 had commenced.[[16]]

It is no longer, therefore, a doubt, that we have now a full knowledge of the whole circumference of this vast body of land, this fifth part of the world (if I may so speak), which our late voyages have discovered to be of so amazing a magnitude, that, to use Captain Cook’s words, it is of a larger extent than any other country in the known world, that does not bear the name of a continent.[[17]]

4. Tasman having entered the Pacific Ocean, after leaving Van Diemen’s Land, had fallen in with a coast to which he gave the name of New Zealand. The extent of this coast, and its position in any direction but a part of its west side, which he sailed along in his course northward, being left absolutely unknown, it had been a favourite opinion amongst geographers, since his time, that New Zealand was a part of a Southern continent, running north and South, from the 33° to the 64° of South latitude, and its northern coast, stretching cross the South Pacific to an immense distance, where its eastern boundary had been seen by Juan Fernandez, half a century before. Captain Cook’s voyage in the Endeavour has totally destroyed this supposition. Though Tasman must still have the credit of having first seen New Zealand, to Captain Cook solely belongs that of having really explored it. He spent near six months upon its coasts in 1769 and 1770[[18]], circumnavigated it completely, and ascertained its extent and division into two islands.[[19]] Repeated visits since that have perfected this important discovery, which, though now known to be no part of a Southern continent, will, probably, in all future charts of the world, be distinguished as the largest islands that exist in that part of the Southern hemisphere.

5. Whether New Holland did or did not join to New Guinea, was a question involved in much doubt and uncertainty, before Captain Cook’s sailing between them, through Endeavour Strait, decided it. We will not hesitate to call this an important acquisition to geography. For though the great sagacity and extensive reading of Mr. Dalrymple had discovered some traces of such a passage having been found before[[20]], yet these traces were so obscure, and so little known in the present age, that they had not generally regulated the construction of our charts; the President De Brosses[[21]], who wrote in 1756, and was well versed in geographical researches, had not been able to satisfy himself about them; and Mons. de Bougainville, in 1768, who had ventured to fall in with the south coast of New Guinea, near ninety leagues to the westward of its south-east point, chose rather to work those ninety leagues directly to windward, at a time when his people were in such distress for provisions as to eat the seal-skins from off the yards and rigging, than to run the risk of finding a passage, of the existence of which he entertained the strongest doubts, by persevering in his westerly course.[[22]] Captain Cook therefore in this part of his voyage (though he modestly disclaims all merit[[23]]), has established, beyond future controversy, a fact of essential service to navigation, by opening, if not a new, at least an unfrequented and forgotten communication between the South Pacific and Indian Oceans.

6. One more discovery, for which we are indebted to Captain Carteret, as similar in some degree to that last mentioned, may properly succeed it in this enumeration. Dampier, in sailing round what was supposed to be part of the coast of New Guinea, discovered it to belong to a separate island, to which he gave the name of New Britain. But that the land which he named New Britain, should be sub-divided again into two separate large islands, with many smaller intervening, is a point of geographical information, which, if ever traced by any of the earliest navigators of the South Pacific, had not been handed down to the present age: and its having been ascertained by Captain Carteret, deserves to be mentioned as a discovery, in the strictest sense of the word; a discovery of the utmost importance to navigation. St. George’s Channel, through which his ship found a way, between New Britain and New Ireland, from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean, to use the Captain’s own words[[24]], “is a much better and shorter passage, whether from the eastward or westward, than round all the islands and lands of the northward.”[[25]]

V.

The voyages of Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, were principally confined to a favourite object of discovery in the South Atlantic; and though accessions to geography were procured by them in the South Pacific, they could do but little toward giving the world a complete view of the contents of that immense expanse of ocean, through which they only held a direct track, on their way homeward, by the East Indies. Cook, indeed, who was appointed to the conduct of the succeeding voyage, had a more accurate examination of the South Pacific intrusted to him. But as the improvement of astronomy went hand in hand, in his instructions, with that of geography, the Captain’s solicitude to arrive at Otaheite time enough to observe the transit of Venus, put it out of his power to deviate from his direct track, in search of unknown lands that might lie to the south-east of that island. By this unavoidable attention to his duty, a very considerable part of the South Pacific, and that part where the richest mine of discovery was supposed to exist, remained unvisited and unexplored, during that voyage in the Endeavour. To remedy this, and to clear up a point which, though many of the learned were confident of, upon principles of speculative reasoning, and many of the unlearned admitted, upon what they thought to be credible testimony, was still held to be very problematical, if not absolutely groundless, by others who were less sanguine or more incredulous; his Majesty, always ready to forward every inquiry that can add to the stock of interesting knowledge in every branch, ordered another expedition to be undertaken. The signal services performed by Captain Cook during his first voyage, of which we have given the outlines, marked him as the fittest person to finish an examination which he had already so skilfully executed in part. Accordingly, he was sent out in 1772, with two ships, the Resolution and Adventure, upon the most enlarged plan of discovery known in the annals of navigation; for he was instructed, not only to circumnavigate the whole globe, but to circumnavigate it in high southern latitudes, making such traverses, from time to time, into every corner of the Pacific Ocean not before examined, as might finally and effectually resolve the much agitated question about the existence of a southern continent in any part of the southern hemisphere accessible by navigation.