END OF TERRA AUSTRALIS 467 



counted " 97 ice-hills within the field, looking like a ridge 

 of mountains rising one above another till they were lost 

 in the clouds." " Such mountains of ice," he thought, 

 " never were seen in the Greenland seas." Petrels seemed 

 to show there must be land further South, but it was 

 impossible to sail further, and Cook thought that question 

 would perhaps never be determined. " I will not say," 

 he wrote with his usual carefulness, " it was impossible to 

 get further South ; but the attempting it would have been 

 a dangerous and rash enterprise. It was my opinion 

 that this ice extended quite to the Pole, and perhaps 

 joined to some land to which it had been fixed from earliest 

 time. I think there must be some land behind this ice 

 .... Yet I, who had ambition not only to go further 

 than anyone had been before, but as far as it was possible 

 for man to go, was not sorry at meeting this interruption." 

 He was certain that " no continent was to be found 

 in this ocean but what must lie so far to the South as 

 to be wholly inaccessible on account of the ice." 



Cook had now accomplished the main task. He had Cook's lack 

 finally destroyed the theory that a Southern Continent ^e'south* i 

 extended into warm and temperate regions. The problem Pole, 

 for the future was not the search for " Terra Australis," 

 but " the siege of the South Pole," and that problem 

 Cook willingly bequeathed to those who might think 

 the game worth the candle. 



But, though Cook felt no interest in the South Pole, He solves 

 he felt deep interest in the Pacific. Here much remained the bl f 

 unknown that was knowable, and well worth knowing, the Pacific. 

 " There remained room for very large islands in places 

 wholly unexamined." And there also remained fascinating 

 problems bequeathed by old navigators ; islands which 

 they had discovered, and which no one had seen for centuries, 

 must now be rediscovered, and must be explained in relation 

 to things known. A true map of the Pacific must be 

 constructed, that would enable men to understand the 

 story of two hundred years of exploration. 



Cook therefore sailed North. He sought for the con- Juan 

 tinent that had been seen by Juan Fernandez in the late :rnan ez - 



