4 6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



naval heroes. The Government of that colony has also purchased and deposited in the 

 Sydney Museum the only obtainable relics of his celebrated voyages the compass, tele- 

 scope and water-bottles, which are said to have been used by him on board his ships 

 during his famous expeditions. 



Cook is really the last of the great discoverers. He brings to a splendid close 

 that story of the Sea which had its opening chapters in the first faint dawn of civiliza- 

 tion in the Old World. His death marks a new period in maritime history. Henceforth 

 the work of navigation becomes limited and circumscribed, confined mainly to marine 

 surveying and the making of charts. True it is that some discoveries still remained to 

 be made by such men as La Perouse, Vancouver, Bligh, D'Entrecasteaux, Portlock, 

 Hampton, Alt, Flinders, Bass, Grant, Murray, Baudin, Hamelin and others ; but the 

 days of the great voyages were over the golden mists of morning, which hid from the 

 old-time mariners they knew not what, had lifted before the rays of the rising sun of 

 exploration and research. The spirit of romance which had brooded over the bosom of 

 the Ocean for centuries had spread her wings and fled. Her seas were fathomed and 

 her islets charted, her lands were measured and labelled, and the world began to shrink 

 beneath the meridians and parallels that bound it in. Cook appears like the last figure 

 of a mighty procession stretching away through the centuries till it is lost in the mists 

 of antiquity. But in what a muster-roll of heroes his name is written ! From that pale 

 past when Jason gave a legend to his country's mythic lore, from clays of viking pirate 

 and the time of that Erik who first put foot upon a Western Continent, down to De 

 Gama, Columbus, Magalhaens, De Leon, Balboa, Drake, Raleigh, De Quiros, Tasman, 

 Dampier and Cook, the world may read in the history of the Sea, a record of the 

 greatest courage, the firmest hope, the most beautiful enthusiasm, the most heroic forti- 

 tude and the sublimest faith, enlisted in the effort to solve the unknown something that 

 hung like a pall upon the verge of Ocean, the mystery of that other-where which 

 every child experiences when he watches the sun go down behind the western waves. 



A fine tribute has been paid to the memory of Cook by his latest biographer, 

 Walter Besant, in the following words : " It seems idle to add anything 'concerning the 

 character of James Cook to what has gone before. He was hard to endure, true to 

 carry out his mission, perfectly loyal and single-minded, he was fearless, he was hot- 

 tempered and impatient, he was self-reliant, he asked none of his subordinates for help 

 or for advice, he was temperate, strong, and of simple tastes, he was born to a hard 

 life, and he never murmured however hard things proved. And, like all men born to 

 be great, when he began to rise, with each step he assumed, as if it belonged to him, the 

 dignity of his new rank. A plain man, those who knew him say, but of good manners." 



Of Cook's services to mankind, Besant writes : " Such as his achievements required, 

 such he was. Let us, however, once more repeat briefly what those achievements were, 

 because they were so great and splendid, and because no other sailor has ever so 

 greatly enlarged the borders of the earth. He discovered the Society Islands ; he proved 

 New Zealand to be two islands and he surveyed its coasts ; he followed the unknown 

 coast of New Holland for two thousand miles and proved that it was separated from 

 New Guinea ; he traversed the Antarctic Ocean on three successive voyages, sailing 

 completely round the globe in its high latitudes, and proving that the dream of the 



