10 INTRODUCTION TO THE 



through the Strait of Le Maire, has constructed a 

 chart of the southern extremity of America, from 

 which it will appear, how much former navigators 

 must have been at a loss to guide themselves, and 

 what advantages will now be enjoyed by those who 

 shall hereafter sail round Cape Horn. 



IV. 



As the voyages of discovery, undertaken by his 

 Majesty's command, have facilitated the access of 

 ships into the Pacific Ocean, they have also greatly 

 enlarged our knowledge of its contents. 



Though the immense expanse usually distinguished 

 by this appellation, had been navigated by Europeans 

 for near two centuries and a half*, by far the greater 

 part of it, particularly to the south of the equator, 

 had remained, during all this time, unexplored. 



The great aim of Magalhaens, and of the Spa- 

 niards in general, its first navigators being merely to 

 arrive, by this passage, at the Moluccas, and the 

 other Asiatic Spice Islands, every intermediate part 

 of the ocean that did not lie contiguous to their 

 western track, which was on the north side of the 

 equator, of course escaped due examination ; and if 

 Mendana and Quiros, and some nameless conductors 

 of voyages before them t, by deviating from this 

 track, and holding a westerly one from Callao, within 

 the southern tropic, were so fortunate as to meet 

 with various islands there, and so sanguine as to con- 

 sider those islands as marks of the existence of a 

 neighbouring southern continent ; in the exploring 

 of which they flattered themselves they should rival 

 the fame of De Gama and Columbus ; these feeble 

 efforts never led to any effectual disclosure of the 

 supposed hidden mine of the New World. On the 

 contrary, their voyages being conducted without a 



* Magalhaen's Voyage was undertaken in 1519. 

 f See the particulars of their discoveries in Mr. Dalrymple's 

 valuable Collection of Voyages in the South Pacific Ocean. 



