Cook and his men sailed on through appalling weather — rain, 

 sleet, hail, and snow — until on January 17, 1773, they became the 

 first men on record to cross the Antarctic Circle. "We could proceed 

 no further," Cook wrote, "the ice being entirely closed to the south 

 in the whole extent from east to west-southwest, without the least 

 appearance of any opening." 



There was still no sign of the longed-for Terra Incognita, so 

 the expedition passed the winter in New Zealand. But Cook was 

 not a man to tolerate idleness. He revisited Tahiti and charted a 

 neighboring group of islands, which he named the Friendly Islands, 

 after which the Resolution and Adventure headed back toward New 

 Zealand from where they were to renew the southward search. As 

 it turned out, the Resolution had to continue the search alone when 

 a violent storm separated the two ships and made it necessary for 

 the Adventure to return to England. For the second time now. Cook 

 was to cross the Antarctic Circle. True to her name, the Resolution 

 pushed on to lat. 67°3i'S., but there was still no sign of land. So 

 she pushed farther on until she reached lat. 7i°io'S. — a farthest- 

 south record that was to stand for nearly half a century. 



At this point a solid barrier of ice, apparently extending for 

 hundreds of miles on either side, blocked progress. "I will not say," 

 Cook wrote, "that it was impossible anywhere to get in among this 

 ice, but I will assert that the bare attempting of it would be a very 

 dangerous enterprise and what I believe no man in my situation 

 would have thought of." His ship was defenseless against ice and 

 would have splintered like matchwood if she had been "nipped." 

 And so at last Cook declared himself". . . well satisfied no continent 

 was to be found in this ocean but must be so far south as to be 

 wholly inaccessible on account of ice." 



A few days later, the strain of the voyage on his iron constitution 

 proved too harsh: he fell ill of a "bilious colic." All he needed, 

 according to the ship's doctor, was fresh meat. As it happened, 

 there was a pet dog on board, so the great captain was soon well. 



During the next year. Cook filled in a few more of the gaps in 

 the geography of the Pacific Ocean. On the world's charts he now 

 fixed Easter Island, with its enigmatic, brooding statues, New 

 Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the enchanting Marquesas. On 

 the homeward run he circumnavigated the first typical Antarctic 

 land — the lofty, snow-capped island of South Georgia, a savage and 

 desolate island of glaciers and barren rocks in the South Atlantic. 



On July 30, 1775, the Resolution reached England after a voyage 

 of some 60,000 miles — more than twice around the world. This 

 second Pacific expedition is the most famous of Cook's voyages 

 and one of the most famous of all voyages. While it had struck a 

 death blow to the age-old myth of Terra Australis Incognita, it had 

 shown that there probably was a land of ice centered on the Pole. 



Beyond these accomplishments, the second expedition also 

 benefited mankind in two other ways. First, Cook proved that 

 disease and death were not the inevitable fellow-travelers of a ship's 

 crew. During the three years at sea only one of the Resolution's 

 company of 1 1 2 men died of disease, although three were killed by 

 accidents. This remarkable record was not the result of sheer good 

 luck: Cook had made a special effort to master the scourge of 

 scurvy, which usually killed up to a third of the men on any long 

 voyage. Aware from his own early experience of the filthy condi- 



The world map on the following pages shows k 

 the routes that Cook followed on his three ^ 

 major voyages to the Pacific, /-//s early 

 visits to Canada, when he charted the St. 

 Lawrence River and Newfoundland, are also 

 plotted. 



41 



