486 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 
remained unsolved. The discoveries already made had indeed 
narrowed the limits which during the sixteenth century were 
still assigned to that imaginary continent, but in the unexplored 
bosom of the South Sea there yet was room enough for lands sur- 
passing the whole of Europe in extent. Many of the South Sea 
islands moreover, though discovered before Cook’s voyages, had 
vanished again from the memory of the world, or, according to 
Humboldt’s expression, ‘ wavered, as if badly rooted on the map, 
for want of exact astronomical measurements.” Thus two 
hundred and fifty years after Magellan the Pacific still offered 
an enormous field for discovery, and when Cook set sail on the 
30th of July. 1768, on his first voyage of circumnavigation, 
nearly one half of the globe lay open to his researches. 
The first service he rendered on this voyage was the discovery 
that the route to the Pacific through the Strait of Ie Maire and 
round Cape Horn was preferable to that which until then had 
been followed, through the Straits of Magellan. 
After having observed at Otaheite the transit of Venus across 
the sun, which was one of the chief objects of the expedition, 
he soon after landed on the shores of Huaheine, Ulietea, and 
Borabora, which had never yet been ‘visited by a European 
mariner, and gave to the whole group the name of the Society 
Islands, on account of their close vicinity to each other. Thence 
he sailed to New Zealand, which he was the first to find consisted 
of two large islands, separated by the strait which bears his name. 
With unwearied industry he spent no less than six months on 
the accurate survey of the New Zealand group, and then sailed to 
New Holland, the eastern coast of which he first discovered, and 
closely examined in its full length of 2000 miles. He also found 
that the continent of Australia was separated from New Guinea 
by a channel which he called “ Endeavour Strait,” but to which 
the justice of posterity has restored or awarded the name of Torres, 
its first explorer. This whole sea is so full of dangerous reefs 
and shoals that for months the sounding line was scarce ever laid 
aside, and any less experienced and prudent navigator must in- 
evitably have been wrecked during these constant cruises in such 
perilous waters. Even Cook owed more than once his preser- 
vation to what may well be called a miraculous interposition of 
Providence, of which I shall cite a remarkable example. It was 
on the 10th of June, 1770, in the latitude of Trinity Bay. The 
5 Lam Se 
