44 THE ANTARCTIC. 



longitude 26° to 27 W., received the name of South Sand- 

 wich Land. On the 3rd of February the Resolution 

 took her course towards the east, for the purpose of 

 looking for Bouvet's Cape Circoncision, having icebergs 

 constantly in sight while keeping in latitude 58° to 59° S. as 

 far as longitude 1° E. From this meridian Cook steered 

 to the north-east till he reached latitude 55° S. and 

 longitude 4° E., the position he had assigned to the 

 Bouvet Isles ; but without result. He now sailed due 

 east until he, on the 23rd of February, reached the 

 same place where he had been compelled to go east in 

 December, 1772, to avoid the field-ice. This time he 

 encountered but few icebergs, the last on the 25th of 

 February in latitude 52 52' S. and longitude 26 31' E. 

 On the 1 8th of March he reached the coast of the Cape, 

 on the 22nd he anchored in Table Bay, and thus com- 

 pleted his second circumnavigation of the world. In 

 regard of its success and its results, Cook's second 

 voyage round the world was the greatest made since the 

 first by Magellan and his successors. On the 30th of 

 July of the same year Cook arrived in the roads at 

 Spithead after a voyage of upwards of three years. 



The result of Cook's second circumnavigation of the 

 globe was of the greatest importance as regarded the 

 knowledge acquired of its actual surface. His voyage 

 therefore not only holds rank as the brilliant achievement 

 of a great navigator, but in regard of its influence 

 and consequences must decidedly be placed beside the 

 discoveries of Christopher Columbus and his successors, 

 to which it is indeed the obvious complement. If 

 Columbus set out to find a new course to the well-known 

 eastern continent, and found a new world instead of the 

 narrow seas he expected, it was Cook who verified that, 

 in place of the vast mythical southern continent that had 

 loomed large since the palmy days of classic antiquity, 

 the southern hemisphere of our earth was covered by 



