END OF TERRA AUSTRALIS 459 



The head of the Admiralty was Banks's old angling Banks's 

 friend, Lord Sandwich, who had plotted with him to drain preparations, 

 the Serpentine in the interests of scientific knowledge. 

 He easily consented to join in this larger plot, and let 

 us carefully remember what is perhaps the only good 

 deed that has ever been ascribed to him greatly astonished 

 Cook by coming on board several times to inspect the 

 ship : " a laudable though rare thing in a First Lord 

 of the Admiralty." It was resolved to send two ships, 

 Cook remembered his experiences among coral reefs 

 too vividly to be content to sail again with only one and 

 the purpose of the voyage was " to settle whether the 

 unexplored part of the Southern Hemisphere be only 

 an immense mass of water, or contain a continent as 

 speculative geography seemed to suggest." Cook was 

 to command, and Banks was to have passage again at 

 the head of a scientific " suite." He made preparations 

 with his usual energy and generosity, and bought five 

 thousand pounds' worth of goods for use on the voyage. 

 Many of the receipts can still be seen in a volume of manu- 

 scripts, now in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, in which Banks 

 bound the documents which tell the story of his indus- 

 trious preparations. So busy was he in these prepara- 

 tions, that he was unable to find time to write an account 



were planning settlements in the Falkland Islands, in the Straits, in 

 Patagonia, in Easter Island, in Tahiti ; in defiance of " our exclusive 

 rights of navigation in the Seas of the Indies ! " The British minister 

 replied to the enquiries of the Spanish ambassador " in a bantering 

 tone." The voyagers, he said, " had been out looking for giants." 

 " I answered him that, if they had enquired of me for information 

 concerning these folk, I would have given it them, and spared them 

 the voyage . . . He asked me if the whole world was Spain's : and I 

 replied that, as to that portion, yes." " Statesmen of Madrid," writes 

 Mr. Corney, " believed that the alleged scheme of ' el famoso Capitan 

 Santiago Cok,' as they were wont to call him, for observing at Tahiti 

 the transit of Venus, was merely a pretext for penetrating, in the 

 interests of political aggrandisement, seas and latitudes over which 

 His Majesty of Spain claimed exclusive sovereignty." The Spaniards 

 took the matter in great seriousness ; sent ships to scour the seas for 

 British settlements ; rediscovered Easter Island in 1770, named it 

 Carlos Island, and annexed it : and visited Tahiti in 1772. It was a 

 bitter story to a patriotic Spaniard : " the islands the aforesaid 

 Wallace (Wallis) claims to have discovered are the same that were seen 

 in the year 1605 by Quiros." 



