VOYAGE OF THE ENDEAVOUR 389 



From 1755 to 1758. Cook served on ships which cruised 

 the Channel, and fought what fights they could get. Un- 

 happily he told no stories of his fights, and it is the exas- 

 peration of biographers that others told no stories about 

 him. Imagination has to make the best of baldest state- 

 ments, like this account of a sea-fight : " We killed her 

 fifty men, and wounded her thirty ; she killed us ten men 

 and wounded us eighty." Then, in 1758, Cook sailed for 

 Canada in the British fleet under "Wry-necked Dick" 

 Boscawen, and took his modest part in the famous deeds 

 at Louisburg and Quebec. Did Cook, during the endless Louisburg 

 monotony of voyage, ever tell stories of Wolfe ? Probably an ^ ue 

 not. Cook was a very matter-of-fact man. To him a 

 brave deed was a brave deed ; it was your duty to do it, 

 to describe it in plain prose words, and then to do another. 

 Doubtless Cook fought what fights came his way with 

 courage and ability, but of them we know nothing. 



What we do know is that he now first gave proof of that 

 extraordinary skill in the charting of unknown coasts, The chartir 

 which, says Admiral Wharton, " enabled him to originate, of u " knowl 



J ' coasts. 



as it may truly be said he did, the art of modern marine 

 surveying." How he acquired the considerable know- 

 ledge of trigonometry, that was needed for this work, 

 is beyond the powers of explanation possessed by a person 

 of my degree of mathematical ignorance. His school 

 education had been elementary. In the winter evenings 

 at Whitby, a kindly house-keeper had " allowed him a table 

 and a candle, that he might read and write by himself, while 

 the other apprentices were engaged in idle talk " ; and, 

 no doubt, he read and wrote with terrible industry. Yet, 

 we are told by our best authority, 1 that, when he began 

 to survey the St. Lawrence, he " had never been taught 

 drawing, and was not known to have ever used a pencil 

 before." However we may explain miracles, Cook won 

 a solid and well-deserved reputation by his surveys 

 of " the Pilotage of the St. Lawrence," and later of the 

 coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, his charts of which, 

 writes Admiral Wharton, are " not yet wholly superseded," 

 1 Young, p. u. 



