472 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



England, 

 July 1775. 



The end of 

 the search 

 after a 

 Southern 

 Continent. 



The South 

 Pole is of 

 no use. 



A fruitful 

 voyage. 



needed repair, and the men needed refreshment ; so he 

 at last consented to steer for the Cape, where he arrived 

 in March 1775. He found that Furneaux had brought 

 the Adventure to the Cape twelve months before, and had 

 given an account of the massacre of a boat's crew, which 

 explained the story Cook had heard in New Zealand. 

 He anchored at Spithead on the 3Oth of July, 1775, after 

 an absence of three years and eighteen days. 



The main object of the voyage had been to determine 

 whether there was or was not a Southern Continent that 

 extended from the South Pole into temperate and tropical 

 regions. Cook had proved that such a continent did 

 not exist. " A final end had been put," thus justly he 

 summed things up, " to the searching after a Southern 

 Continent, for near two centuries a favourite theory among 

 the geographers of all ages." He believed, nevertheless, 

 that a Southern Continent existed, and he thought it 

 probable that he had actually seen it. Its neighbourhood 

 seemed to be indicated by the excessive cold, and by the 

 ice-islands. But the Southern lands that had actually 

 been discovered he refers apparently to South Georgia 

 were " lands doomed by nature to perpetual frigidness, . . . 

 whose horrible and savage aspect," he wrote, " I have 

 not words to describe." How much more horrible and 

 savage must be the unknown continent of the still further 

 South ! "If any one should have resolution and per- 

 severance to clear up this point by proceeding further 

 than I have done, I shall not envy him the honour of the 

 discovery ; but I will be bold to say that the world will 

 not be benefited by it." 



Cook has a somewhat chilly way of insisting on the 

 negative importance of his voyage. In the history of 

 exploration, he is the apostle of the victorious common 

 sense of his period, more anxious to brush away cob- 

 webs than to stir men to new enthusiasms. He seems 

 to take greater pleasure in the destruction of mistakes 

 than in the discovery of truth. Yet it was a voyage 

 of amazing fruitfulness. He had proved that the Southern 

 Continent of the theorists did not exist ; but he had also 



