486 THE PROGRESS OE MARITIME DISCOVERY. 



remained unsolved. The discoveries already made had indeed 

 narrowed the limits which during the sixteenth century were 

 still assigned to that imaginary continent, hut in the unexplored 

 bosom of the South Sea there yet was room enough for lands sur- 

 passing the whole of Europe in extent. Many of the South Sea 

 islands moreover, though discovered before Cook's voyages, had 

 vanished again from the memory of the world, or, according to 

 Humboldt's expression, " wavered, as if badly rooted on the map, 

 for want of exact astronomical measurements." Thus two 

 hundred and fifty years after Magellan the Pacific still offered 

 an enormous field for discovery, and when Cook set sail on the 

 30th of July, 1768, on his first voyage of circumnavigation, 

 nearly one half of the globe lay open to his researches. 



The first service he rendered on this voyage was the discovery 

 that the route to the Pacific through the Strait of Le Maire and 

 round Cape Horn was preferable to that which until then had 

 been followed, through the Straits of Magellan. 



After having observed at Otaheite the transit of Venus across 

 the sun, which was one of the chief objects of the expedition, 

 he soon after landed on the shores of Huaheine, Ulietea, and 

 Borabora, which had never yet' been visited by a European 

 mariner, and gave to the whole group the name of the Society 

 Islands, on account of their close vicinity to each other. Thence 

 he sailed to New Zealand, which he was the first to find consisted 

 of two large islands, separated by the strait which bears his name. 

 With unwearied industry he spent no less than six months on 

 the accurate survey of the New Zealand group, and then sailed to. 

 New Holland, the eastern coast of which he first discovered, and 

 closely examined in its full length of 2000 miles. He also found 

 that the continent of Australia was separated from New Guinea 

 by a channel which he called " Endeavour Strait," but to which 

 the justice of posterity has restored or awarded the name of Torres, 

 its first explorer. This whole sea is so full of dangerous reefs 

 and shoals that for months the sounding line was scarce ever laid 

 aside, and any less experienced and prudent navigator must in- 

 evitably have been wrecked during these constant cruises in such 

 perilous waters. Even Cook owed more than once his preser- 

 vation to what may well be called a miraculous interposition of 

 Providence, of which I shall cite a remarkable example. It was 

 on the 10th of June, 1770, in the latitude of Trinity Bay. The 



