END OF TERRA AUSTRALIS 473 



made it very probable that an Antarctic Continent did 

 exist. He was the last seeker of the. continent, which 

 Mercator had drawn, and which Quiros had described. 

 But he was also the first scientific explorer of the South 

 Polar Regions, the precursor of Weddell and Ross, of 

 Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott. And, moreover, the 

 work he had done by the way, the work of exploration 

 in the temperate and tropical regions of the South Pacific, 

 was of very great value. North, South, East, and West, 

 Cook had voyaged through the immense ocean, with search- 

 light and measuring-rod, discovering islands, rediscovering 

 the discoveries of earlier days, bringing into existence a 

 map of the Pacific which, while much remained to be filled 

 in, was at least correct in its outlines and conceptions. 

 When the polite French navigator Laperouse complained 

 that Cook had left nothing for his successors to do but 

 to praise him, the compliment was sincere, and, in the 

 sense in which the words were spoken, it was true. 



"Cook," wrote Laperouse, "will always appear to me Good health 

 the greatest of navigators, the true Columbus of this J^g^han a 

 country." 1 Cook made no such claim, and probably Southern 

 he would have willingly consented to the claim which Contir 

 Quiros had made to that title. His claim was only that 

 he had done his " duty." He made, however, one modest 

 boast. In a voyage of over three years only four men 

 had died. Of the four only one had died of sickness, 

 and his sickness had not been scurvy. Cook had not 

 discovered the Southern Continent, but he had dis- 

 covered something far more valuable. He had discovered 

 that by the use of anti-scorbutics, by careful airing of the 

 ship, by scrupulous attention to cleanliness, a very long 

 voyage might be made through all variations of climates 

 without injury to health. And he believed that this dis- 

 covery would " make the voyage remarkable when disputes 

 about a Southern Continent shall have ceased to engage 

 attention." And the men of science agreed with him. 

 In February 1776 Cook was elected member of the Royal 

 Society, and he wrote a paper in explanation of the means 

 1 Laperouse was writing especially of the Sandwich Islands. 



