HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 45 



boundless wastes of water, and that the preponderating 

 surface consisted not of land but of sea. For the first 

 time the true limits were set of the " Oikumene," the 

 habitable countries of the globe. The only field left for 

 exploration and discovery lay in the extension of North 

 America to the north-west, and this also Cook achieved 

 on his third and last great voyage, which ended with his 

 death in Hawaii. 



If now the results of the second voyage, so far as the 

 great Terra australis is concerned, be summed up, it is 

 found that Cook circumnavigated the earth in latitude 

 50° S., with the exception of the portions between lon- 

 gitude 57° to 65° E. and 159 to 180° E. Moreover, he 

 traversed 115° of longitude in a latitude of 6o° or higher, 

 and three times crossed the Antarctic circle. These three 

 points were, in round numbers, in longitude 30° E., be- 

 tween 1 35° and 146° W., and lastly between 102 and 

 109° W. In this last advance he attained to a latitude of 

 71° 10' S., which for many a year remained, as before 

 said, the extreme point reached in the southern hemi- 

 sphere. Land he certainly newly discovered in the South 

 Sandwich Isles, probably when pressing farthest south, 

 and perhaps when first crossing the Antarctic circle, but 

 he did not discover South Georgia nor succeed on this 

 voyage in finding the French discoveries of Bouvet and 

 Marion. This omission was made good at the beginning 

 of his third voyage in December, 1776, when he found 

 the Marion Isles (renamed Prince Edward's Isles after 

 the Duke of Kent) and Kerguelen. The geographical 

 position of both was at the same time accurately deter- 

 mined. 



Cook therefore had proved the absence of a southern 

 continent as previously imagined, and at the same time 

 the preponderance of water in the southern hemisphere, 

 though with smaller portions of land in the higher lati- 

 tudes. He was the first to bring a report of the com- 



