SO INTRODUCTION TO THE 



ships, to determine how far navigation was practicable 

 toward tlie north pole. And though his Lordship 

 met with the same insuperable bar to his progress, 

 which former navigators had experienced*, the hopes 

 of opening a communication between the Pacific and 

 Atlantic Oceans, by a northerly course, were not 

 abandoned ; and a voyage for that purpose was or- 

 dered to be undertaken. 



The operations proposed to be pursued were so 

 new, so extensive, and so various, that the skill and 

 experience of Captain Cook, it was thought, would 

 be requisite to conduct them. Without being liable 

 to any charge of want of zeal for the public service, 

 he might have passed the rest of his days in the com- 

 mand to which he had been appointed in Greenwich 

 Hospital, there to enjoy the fame he had dearly 

 earned in two circumnavigations of the world. But 

 he cheerfully relinquished this honourable station at 

 home \ and, happy that the Earl of Sandwich had 

 not cast his eye upon any other commander, engaged 

 in the conduct of the expedition, the history of 

 which is presented to the public in these volumes ; 

 an expedition that would expose him to the toils and 

 perils of a third circumnavigation, by a track hi- 

 therto unattempted. Every former navigator round 

 the globe had made his passage home to Europe by 

 the Cape of Good Hope ; the arduous task was now 

 assigned to Captain Cook, of attempting it, by 

 reaching the high northern latitudes between Asia 

 and America. So that the usual plan of discovery 

 was reversed ; and, instead of a passage from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, one from the latter into the 

 former was to be tried. For it was wisely foreseen, 

 that whatever openings or inlets there might be on 

 the east side of America, which lie in a direction 



* See the history of former attempts to sail toward the north 

 pole, in the introduction to Lord Mulgrave's Journal. Mr. Bar- 

 rington has collected several instances of ships advancing to very 

 high latitudes. See his Miscellanies, p. 1124% 



