400 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



man, well-born, chief Tahowa or priest of this island." 

 Banks had added him to his "suite." "Thank Heaven," 

 he says, " I have a sufficiency, and I do not know why 

 I may not keep him as a curiosity as my neighbours do 

 lions and tigers." The pious priest often prayed for 

 a wind, and boasted of the success of his prayers, which, 

 adds Banks, he " never began till he perceived a breeze 

 so near the ship that it generally reached him before 

 his prayer was finished." Under the guidance of Tupia 

 and his winds, Cook visited the neighbouring islands, 

 and named the group " the Society Isles," because " they 

 lay contiguous to one another." Then, on the Qth of 

 August, 1769, they " launched out into the Ocean in search 

 -of what chance or Tupia might direct us to." 



Cook seeks Cook's "Instructions" were that from this point he should 

 Continent 6 " 1 prosecute the design of making discoveries in the South 

 Pacific Ocean by proceeding to the South as far as the 

 Latitude 40. Then, if he found no land, he was to proceed 

 to the West between 40 and 3 5' till he fell in with New 

 Zealand, which he was to explore. His business was_ to 

 test the confident statement of the geographers, and 

 especially of Dalrymple, that the unknown South must 

 be nearly all land, that in Latitude 40 a continent stretched 

 from the coast said to have been seen on the East by Juan 

 Fernandez to the coast that had been seen on the West 

 by Tasman, a continent as rich as Peru, and as large as 

 the whole of Asia from Turkey to China. Cook had 

 already sailed in deep water over much of the Eastern 

 part of this " theoretic " continent. He had now to explore 

 its Northern coast, and then the Western. 



The geographers represented its Northern coast by a 

 line drawn in the neighbourhood of Tahiti, with the in- 

 scription " Lands and islands seen by Quiros." Bougain- 

 ville had looked for this coastline in vain, and had been 

 puzzled to know on what authority the geographers had 

 drawn it. Cook made a much more thorough search. 

 He sails to He sailed Southward to 40 22', a point at which, according 

 finds^o to Dalrymple, he should have been in the middle of a con- 

 land, tinent as big as Asia. Cook could see " not the least 



