, 6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



of Cape York was rounded and named. At this point Cook altered his course to the 

 westward, and sailing through the great water-way which bears the name of the Spaniard 

 Torres, he bore away for Batavia. Cook did not know that he was simply following irt 

 the wake of the old Almirantc of Ue Quires, and under the impression that he was the 

 original discoverer, he gave to the sea-road which separates Australia from New Guinea 

 the name of Endeavour Straits. 



It will be remembered that up to this time, and for some years afterwards, the 

 report of Torres lay among the archives at Manila, neglected and forgotten, so that 

 the existence of a passage from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean had not yet been made 

 known. An eager desire to set the question at rest now took possession of Cook's 

 mind. In threading the channel he found that it grew gradually wider, and two distant 

 points were descried between which no land was visible. Cook landed on one of the 

 islands, and after scaling an eminence, which commanded an uninterrupted view to 

 the south-west and west-south-west for a distance of forty miles, the suspicion that he 

 had found a practicable passage between New Guinea and the main-land gave place to 

 what was almost an absolute certainty. Here, for the time being, Cook brought his 

 Australian exploration to a close ; but before he passed through the straits that Torres 

 had discovered more than a century and a half before, he hoisted the Union Jack on 

 Possession Island as he named the spot where he landed on this occasion. It was his 

 fifth landing-place since the date of his first approach to the Australian Coast, and here 

 he went through a ceremony which is best described in his own words. 



" As I am now about to quit the eastern coast of New Holland," wrote the 

 fortunate circumnavigator, " which I have coasted from latitude thirty-eight degrees to 

 this place, and which I am confident no European has ever seen before, I once more 

 hoist English colours ; and though I have already taken possession of several parts, I 

 now take possession of the whole of the eastern coast, by the name of New South 

 Wales (from its great similarity to that part of the principality of Wales), in right of 

 my Sovereign, George the Third, King of Great Britain." The marines who surrounded 

 him then fired three volleys of small arms, which were responded to by the same 

 number from the ship. Sail was promptly made, and soon the Australian coast sank 

 beneath the horizon, as the Endeavour passed on her way through Torres Straits to 

 Batavia, where she was again beached and repaired. 



By this time the confinement of so long a voyage had caused the utmost prostra- 

 tion to the crew, who were so much affected by the fever-laden atmosphere of Batavia, 

 that all but ten were stricken down, and seven deaths occurred ; on resuming their 

 homeward journey the men began to succumb to scurvy, so that by the time the vessel 

 reached England, she was little better than a floating hospital. Besant, Cook's latest 

 biographer, in a graphic passage writes : " After leaving Batavia, where the whole com- 

 pany seem to have been poisoned by the heat and the stinks of the place, scurvy and 

 fever together fell upon the crew, so that forty were on the sick list. Out of the forty 

 twenty-three died. This dreadful calamity the sight of all the suffering impressed Cook 

 so much that in future we shall find him taking as much thought for the prevention of 

 scurvy, as for the prosecution of the enterprise in hand ; and after the second voyage 

 he was as much congratulated on his success in this respect as on his achievements as 



