REST AND PREPARATIONS 99 



absence of currents had led him to the conclusion 

 that this continent had no existence. 



The famous hydrographer, Alexander Dal- 

 rymple, who had first been nominated to lead the 

 expedition in which Cook had just distinguished 

 himself, maintained, on the other hand, that the 

 continent did exist, and that Cook's deductions 

 proved nothing. Cook, he said, had not suffi- 

 ciently explored the Antarctic Ocean to have the 

 right to deny the existence of Terra Australis 

 Incognita. 



For two hundred years countless scientists, 

 travellers and geographers had believed that an 

 enormous tract of land, much greater than Eu- 

 rope, lay to the south of the globe. Tasman 

 thought that the corner of New Zealand which 

 he had discovered formed part of it. A French- 

 man, Lozier Bouvet, who had been commis- 

 sioned by the East India Company at the be- 

 ginning of the eighteenth century, affirmed that 

 he had seen, in latitude 54° south and longitude 

 1 1 ° east, a point of land, to which he had given 

 the name of Cape Circumcision. The Portu- 

 guese sailor Fernandez de Quiros also believed 

 that he had sighted the great southern continent. 



The imagination of the public invested this 

 mysterious land with marvels. It was reported 

 to be inhabited by a highly civilised race, that 

 rivers of gold flowed there, that the sun cast a 



