INTRODUCTION. iti 
broadly sketched by Cook, Vancouver, Flinders, and 
others of our own countrymen; by La Perouse, Den- 
trecasteaux, Baudin, and other foreign navigators, French, 
Spanish, and Russian: in ascertaining with greater pre- 
cision the position of particular points in various parts 
ef the globe—on the shores of Asia Minor—of northern 
Africa, and of the numerous islands in the Mediterranean— 
the coasts, harbours, and rivers of Newfoundland, Labra- 
dore, Hudson’s bay, and that reproach to the present 
state of European navigation, the existence or non-existence 
of Baffin’s bay, and the north-west passage from the 
Atlantic to the Eastern ocean—in exploring those parts 
of the north-west coast of New Holland, which have not 
hitherto been visited since the time of Dampier—and in 
obtaining more distinct and accurate information of those 
great Archipelagos of islands, and those innumerable reefs 
and islets, which are scattered over the northern and 
southern Pacific oceans, and the Indian and Chinese seas, 
many hundreds of which were but the other day discovered, 
in one spot, by the Alceste, on her late voyage up the Yel- 
low Sea, where not a single island had been even suspected 
to exist—and, to come nearer home, in filling up and 
correcting those imperfect and erroneous .surveys of our 
own coasts, and of the seas that surround them—and lastly, 
‘in ascertaining with more precision, the extent, direction, 
and velocity, in different parts and at different seasons of 
the year, of that extraordinary current known by the 
name of the Gulf Stream, by which all the currents of the 
northern Atlantic are more or less influenced. These are 
objects of general concern in which all Europe and Ame- 
rica are equally interested. 
