sx INTRODUCTION. 



courfe of this voyage, which was carried on, with fingular 

 perfevcrance, between three and four years, have been al- 

 ready Hated to the reader. But the general fearch now 

 made, throughout the whole Southern hemifphere, as being 

 the principal objed in view, hath been refervcd for this fe- 

 parate article. Here, indeed, we are not to take notice of 

 lands that have been difcovered, but of feas failed through, 

 where lands had been fuppofed to exift. In tracing the 

 route of the Refolution and Adventure, throughout the 

 South Atlantic, the South Indian, and the South Pacific 

 Oceans that environ the globe, and combining it with the 

 route of the Endeavour, we receive what may be called ocu- 

 lar demonftration, that Captain Cook, in his perfevering re- 

 fearches, failed over many an extenfive continent, which, 

 though fuppofed to have been feen by former navigators, at 

 the approach of his fhips, funk into the bofom of the ocean, 

 and, like the bafelefs fabric of a vifion^ left not a rack behind'* » 



It 



* It muft be obferved, however, that Monfieur le Monier, in the Memoirs of the 

 French Academy of Sciences for 1776, pleads for the exiftence of Cape Circumci- 

 fion, feen by Bouvet in 1738, which our Engliih navigator fought for in vain, and 

 fuppofes to have been only an ifland of ice. Mr. Wales, in a paper read before the 

 Royal Society, very forcibly replied to M, le Monier's objedions ; and the attack 

 having been repeated, he has drawn up a more extended defence of this part of Cap- 

 tain Cook's Journal, which he hath very obligingly communicated, and is here in- 

 ferted. 



Arguments, tending to prove that Captain Cook fought for Cape Circumcifton under the pro- 

 per Meridian ; a?id that the Objeiiions which have been made to his Condnil, in this 

 refpeSlt are not well founded. 



In the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris for 1776, printed in 

 1779, M. Le Monier has made fome remarks, with a defign to fhew that Captain 

 Cook fought the land, ufually called Cape Circumcifion, in a wrong place ; and that, 

 inftead of looking for it under the meridian of 9° { or lo'-' of Eaft longitude, he ought 

 to have looked for it under a meridian which is only 3", or 3° 5 to the Eaft ward of the 



meridian 



± 



