64 cook's first voyage march, 



be room enough for the Cape of a southern continent 

 to extend northward into a low southern latitude, 

 I shall give my reason for believing there is no Cape 

 of any southern continent, to the northward of 40 

 south. 



Notwithstanding what has been laid down by some 

 geographers in their maps, and alleged by Mr. Dal- 

 rymple, with respect to Quiros, it is improbable in 

 the highest degree that he saw to the southward of 

 two islands, which he discovered in latitude 25 or 26, 

 and which I suppose may lie between the longitude 

 of 130 and 140 W., any signs of a continent, much 

 less any thing which, in his opinion, was a known or 

 indubitable sign of such land; for if he had, he 

 would certainly have sailed southward in search or 

 it, and if he had sought, supposing the signs to have 

 been indubitable, he must have found : the discovery 

 of a southern continent was the ultimate object of 

 Quiros's voyage, and no man appears to have had it 

 more at heart ; so that if he was in latitude 26 S. 

 and in longitude 146 W., where Mr. Dalrymple has 

 placed the islands he discovered, it may fairly be in- 

 ferred, that no part of a southern continent extends 

 to that latitude. 



It will, I think, appear with equal evidence from 

 the accounts of Roggewein's voyage, that between 

 the longitudes of 130 and 150 W. there is no main 

 land to the northward of 35 S. Mr. Pingre, in 

 a treatise concerning the transit of Venus, which he 

 went out to observe, has inserted an extract of Rog- 

 gewein's voyage, and a map of the South Seas ; and 

 for reasons which may be seen at large in his work, 

 supposes him, after leaving Easter Island, which he 

 places in latitude 28 -J S. longitude 123 W., to have 

 steered S. W. as high as 34 S. and afterwards 

 W. N. W. ; and if this was indeed his route, the 

 proof that there is no main land to the northward of 

 35 S. is irrefragable. Mr. Dalrymple indeed sup- 



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