VOYAGE OF THE ENDEAVOUR 387 



appeal to the feelings of a King who gloried in the name 

 of Briton. French, Danes, Swedes, and Russians were 

 planning to intrude their observations on a celestial 

 phenomenon, which the British nation had discovered 

 and had annexed : " the British nation justly celebrated 

 in the learned world for their knowledge of astronomy, 

 in which they are inferior to no nation in the world, ancient 

 or modern." British astronomers should be sent to 

 Spitzbergen or the North Cape, to Hudson's Bay, and 

 to some place in the South Seas, not exceeding 30 S. Lat., 

 and between 140 and 180 Long. W. The expense would 

 be four thousand pounds. 1 



This request was also granted. It remained to choose Cook 

 the commanders and the observers. The Society had P referred to 



Dairy mple. 



ready its list of men well qualified to observe. Among 

 them was Dalrymple, the British apostle of the Southern 

 Continent, who had printed his booklet in the previous 

 year. But Dalrymple would not go as observer, unless 

 he was also appointed commander, and the Admiralty 

 replied that the appointment, as commander, of a seaman 

 who was not in the Royal Navy would be " entirely repug- 

 nant to its regulations." It became necessary, therefore, 

 to look for an officer of the Royal Navy, who was also a 

 man of science. The two qualifications seldom went 

 together. 2 But it happened that there was a man, well 

 known both to the Admiralty and to the Royal Society, 

 who combined them in a very remarkable way : James 

 Cook, late "Master" of H.M.S. Northumberland, now 

 engaged in surveying the coasts of Newfoundland, who 

 had just written a learned paper, founded on his own 

 observation of the eclipse of the sun. 



James Cook, like William Dampier, was a farmer's James Cook, 

 boy. In a time when " property was power," he won 

 the highest distinction, and even earned, at the age of 



1 Welde, vol. ii. p. 33. 



2 The writer of Anson's Voyage complains that naval officers regarded 

 scientific study as " effeminate." It is a mistake, he argues, to suppose 

 that " the perfection of sea-officers consists in a turn of mind and 

 temper resembling the boisterous element they have to deal with." 



