sxx 



INTRODUCTION. 



and a voyage for that purpofe, was ordered to be under- 

 .taken. 



The operations propofed to be purfued, were fo new, Co 

 extenfive, and fo various, that the lldll and experience of 

 Captain Cook, it was thought, would be requifite to condudt 

 them. Without being Uable to any charge of want of zeal 

 •for the pubUc fervice, he might have pafTed the reft of his 

 days in the command to which he had been appointed in 

 Greenwich Hofpital, there to enjoy the fame he had dearly 

 earned in two circumnavigations of the world. But he 

 cheerfully relinquiflied this honourable ftation at home; and, 

 happy that the Earl of Sandwich had not caft his eye upon 

 any other Commander, engaged in the condudl of the ex- 

 pedition, the hiftory of which is prefented to the Public in 

 thefe Volumes ; an expedition that would expofe him to 

 the toils and perils of a third circumnavigation, by a track 

 hitherto unattempted. Every former navigator round the 

 globe had made his palTage home to Europe by the Cape 

 of Good Hope ; the arduous taflc was now ailigned to Cap- 

 tain Cook, of attempting it, by reaching the high Northern 

 latitudes between Afia and America. So that the ufuahplan 

 of difcovery was reverfed ; and, inftead of a pafTage from 

 the Atlantic to the Pacific, one from the latter into the 

 former was to be tried. For it was wifely forefeen, that 

 whatever openings or inlets there might be on the Eaft dde 

 of America, which lie in a dire(5tion which could give any 

 hopes of a pafTage, the ultimate fuccefs of it would ftill de- 

 pend upon there being an open fea between the Weft fide of 

 that continent, and the extremities of Afia. Captain Cook, 

 therefore, was ordered to proceed into the Pacific Ocean, 

 through the chain of his new iflands in the Southern tropic, 



7 and 



