18 INTRODUCTION TO THE 



course.* Captain Cook therefore in this part of his 

 voyage (though he modestly disclaims all merit t), 

 has established, beyond future controversy, a fact of 

 essential service to navigation, by opening, if not a 

 new, at least an unfrequented and forgotten com- 

 munication 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, dis- 

 covered 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 in- 

 formation, 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 ascer- 

 tained 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 Cap- 

 tain's own wordst, " is a much better and shorter 

 passage, whether from the eastward or westward, 

 than round all the islands and lands of the north- 

 ward." 



* " Le triste etat ou nous etions reduits, ne nous permettoit de 

 " chercher en faisant route a l'ouest, un passage au sud de la Nou- 

 " velle Guinee, qui nous frayat par le Golfe de la Carpenterie une 

 " route nou velle & courte aux iles Moluques. Rien netoit a la 

 " v trite plus problematique que V existence de ce passage" Voyage 

 autour du Monde, p. 259. 



f Hawkesworth, vol. iii. p. 660. 



f Hawkesworth, vol. i. p. 563. 



, The position of the Solomon Islands, Mendana's celebrated 

 discovery, will no longer remain a matter in debate amongst geo- 



