END OF TERRA AUSTRALIS 469 



Another friend asked him to come back again ; and, when 

 he found this could not be, "he asked," says Cook, "the 

 name of my Marai or burying place. I told him Stepney, 

 the parish in which I live when in London, and they shouted 

 ' Stepney Marai no Toote.' ' 



Then he sailed again to the Friendly Islands, and thence The New 

 sailed on to learn the truth about Quiros's Austrialia del Hebrldes - 

 Espiritu Santo. Bougainville, we remember, had redis- 

 covered the land of Quiros in 1768, and had proved that it 

 was no continent, but a group of Islands, which he named 

 the Great Cyclades. Cook now explored them with far 

 greater thoroughness, and thought himself justified in giving 

 them a Scotch name, "the New Hebrides." l He noticed 

 how easily Quiros had misunderstood the geography of 

 the discovery. " It was not without reason," he wrote, 

 that Quiros thought the land to be " part of the Southern 

 Continent,, which at that time, and till very lately, was 

 supposed to exist." Cook himself, like Quiros, saw " land 

 further than the eye could reach." 



In interesting detail, Cook traced the geography of the The Bay of 

 story of 1606. He visited a Bay which, he was perfectly an ' d s ^ lp 

 sure, was the Bay of St. Philip and St. James ; the Bay James, 

 in which Quiros had founded the City of New Jerusalem ug ' I774< 

 which was never built. "I found the general points to 

 agree so well with Quiros's description, that I had not 

 the least doubt about it." He recognised the long deep 

 harbour, and the passage up it gave him almost as much 

 trouble as it had given Quiros that stormy night when 

 he sought in x vain to anchor. The whole topography 

 of the place fitted the story which Quiros had told ; the 

 very deep water two cables from the beach, the fresh- 

 water stream so large and deep that boats could enter 

 it at high tide, the luxuriant vegetation, the sides of 

 the hills chequered with plantations, and every valley 

 watered by a stream. Even the poisonous fish were 

 there, and they poisoned Cook's men as one hundred and 

 sixty years before their ancestors had poisoned the men 



1 " The Hebrides," explains Forster (vol. ii. p. 366), " are the western- 

 most islands of Great Britain." 



