INTRODUCTION. iii 



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 

 of the o'lobe — 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 Dam pier — 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 extraordinar}-^ current known by the 

 name of the Gulf Stream, by which all the currents of the 

 northern Adantic are more or less influenced. These are 

 olijects of general concern in which all Europe and Ame- 

 rica are equally interested. 



