COOK’S VOYAGES. 491 
thle southern Thule; and finally returns to England (30th July, 
1773) after an absence of three years and seventeen days. 
His third voyage (1776) was undertaken for the purpose of 
exploring the Northern Pacific, and casting the same broad light 
over those unvisited waters as over the southern part of that 
vast ocean. ‘To the south-east of the Cape of Good Hope he 
discovered Prince Edward’s Islands, and thence proceeded to 
explore Kerguelen’s Land, discovered six years previously by 
the Frenchman of that name. This wintry island bears neither 
tree nor shrub, but in the bays the gigantic seaweeds form sub- 
marine forests, and countless penguins make the dreary shores 
resound with their deep braying voice. 
Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand, and the Friendly and 
Society Isles were now visited for the last time. Steering to 
the north, Cook discovered in the last days of the year 1777 the 
Sandwich Islands, most likely previously known to the Spaniards, 
but kept secret from the world; and reached on the 7th of 
March, 1778, the mountainous forest-girt coast of New Albion, 
along which two centuries before Drake had sailed as far as 48° 
N. lat. Penetrating farther and farther to the north, he at 
length reached the most westerly point of the American conti- 
nent, Cape Prince of Wales, which, stretching far out into the 
Straits of Behring, is only thirty-nine miles distant from the 
east coast of Siberia. Both pillars of this water-gate, according 
to Chamisso’s description, are high mountains within sight of 
each other, rising abruptly from the sea on the Asiatic side, 
while on the American their foot is bordered by a low alluvial 
plain. On the Asiatic side the sea has its greatest depth, and 
the current, which sets from the south into the channel with a 
rapidity of two or three knots an hour, its greatest strength. 
Whales and numberless herds of walruses are seen only on the 
Asiatic side. 
Through these famous straits, which Deshnew had first passed, 
and which Behring most likely never saw, Cook penetrated 
into the Arctic Ocean, examined a part of the Siberian coast, 
and then sailed to the opposite shores of America, where he dis- 
covered and explored the coast of West Georgia as far as 70° 44 
N. lat., until fields of ice opposed an impenetrable barrier to his 
progress. 
