INTRODUCTION 



TO 



THE FIRST VOYAGE. 



With Lieutenant Cook, in this voyage, embarked 

 Joseph Banks, Esquire, a gentleman possessed of con- 

 siderable landed property in Lincolnshire. He re- 

 ceived the education of a scholar rather to qualify 

 him for the enjoyments than the labours of life ; yet 

 an ardent desire to know more of Nature than could 

 be learnt from books determined him, at a very early 

 age, to forego what are generally thought to be the 

 principal advantages of a liberal fortune, and to apply 

 his revenue not in procuring the pleasures of leisure and 

 ease, but in the pursuit of his favourite study, through 

 a series of fatigue and danger, which, in such circum- 

 stances, have very seldom been voluntarily incurred, 

 except to gratify the restless and insatiable desires 

 of avarice or ambition. 



Upon his leaving the university of Oxford, in the 

 year 1763, he crossed the Atlantic, and visited the 

 coasts of Newfoundland and Labradore. The dan- 

 ger, difficulty, and inconvenience that attend long 

 voyages are very different in idea and experience ; 

 Mr. Banks, however, returned; undiscouraged, from 

 his first expedition ; and when he found that the 

 Endeavour was equipping for a voyage to the South 

 Seas, in order to observe the Transit of Venus, and 

 afterwards attempt farther discoveries, he deter- 



B ^2 



