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. / 1 :s TRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



observer. When astronomical observations had to be made it was he who acted as 

 principal astronomer. He was as much awake to the importance of botany, especially of 

 medicinal plants, as he was to the laying down of a correct chart. It is certain that 

 there was not in the whole of the King's Navy any officer who could compare with 

 Cook in breadth and depth of knowledge, in forethought, in the power of conceiving 

 -n-at designs, and in courage and pertinacity in carrying them through. Let us always 

 think of the Captain growing only more cheerful as his ship forced her way southwards, 

 though his men lay half-starved and half-poisoned on the deck." 



Besant rightly renders full meed of praise to Cook for his struggles to vanquish, on 

 long sea-voyages, the terrible pest of scurvy, which, prior to his efforts in this direction, 

 had decimated the crews in a wholesale fashion. He says : " His voyages would have 

 been impossible, his discoveries could not have been made, but for that invaluable dis- 

 covery of his whereby scurvy was kept off, and the men enabled to remain at sea long 

 months without a change. I have called attention to the brief mention he makes of 

 privation and hardships ; he barely notes the accident by which half his company were 

 poisoned by fish, he says nothing about the men's discomforts when their biscuit was 

 rotten. These things, you see, are not scurvy. One may go hungry for a while, but 

 recover when food is found, and is none the worse ; one gets sick of salt junk, but if 

 scurvy is averted, mere disgust is not worth observation. To drive off scurvy to keep 

 it off was the greatest boon that any man could confer upon sailors. Cook has the 

 honour and glory of finding out the way to avert this scourge. Those who have read 

 of this horrible disease the tortures it entailed, the terror it was on all long voyages 

 will understand how great should be the gratitude of the country to this man. Since 

 the disease fell chiefly upon the men before the mast, it was fitting that one who had 

 also in his youth run up the rigging to the music of the boatswain's pipe should discover 

 that way and confer that boon." With these noble words of honest' admiration for a 

 good man and a great sailor, who opened, up a continent for settlement by England, let 

 us take our leave of the grandest figure in the history of maritime discovery since the 

 days of the heroic Genoese who gave a continent to Spain. 



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