COOK'S VOYAGES. 491 



-the southern Thule ; and finally returns to England (30th July, 

 1775) after an absence of three years and seventeen days. 



His third voyage (1776) was undertaken for the purpose of 

 exploring the Northern Pacific, and casting the same broad light 

 over those unvisited waters as over the southern part of that 

 vast ocean. To the south-east of the Cape of Good Hope he 

 discovered Prince Edward's Islands, and thence proceeded to 

 •explore Kerguelen's Land, discovered six years previously by 

 the Frenchman of that name. This wintry island bears neither 

 tree nor shrub, but in the bays the gigantic seaweeds form sub- 

 marine forests, and countless penguins make the dreary shores 

 resound with their deep braying voice. 



Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, and the Friendly and 

 Society Isles were now visited for the last time. Steering to 

 the north, Cook discovered in the last days of the year 1777 the 

 Sandwich Islands, most likely previously known to the Spaniards, 

 but kept secret from the world ; and reached on the 7th of 

 March, 1778, the mountainous forest-girt coast of New Albion, 

 along which two centuries before Drake had sailed as far as 48° 

 N. lat. Penetrating farther and farther to the north, he at 

 length reached the most westerly point of the American conti- 

 nent, Cape Prince of Wales, which, stretching far out into the 

 Straits of Behring, is only thirty-nine miles distant from the 

 •east coast of Siberia. Both pillars of this water-gate, according 

 to Chamisso's description, are high mountains within sight of 

 each other, rising abruptly from the sea on the Asiatic side, 

 while on the American their foot is bordered by a low alluvial 

 plain. On the Asiatic side the sea has its greatest depth, and 

 the current, which sets from the south into the channel with a 

 rapidity of two or three knots an hour, its greatest strength. 

 Whales and numberless herds of walruses are seen only on the 

 Asiatic side. 



Through these famous straits, which Deshnew had first passed, 

 and which Behring most likely never saw, Cook penetrated 

 into the Arctic Ocean, examined a part of the Siberian coast, 

 and then sailed to the opposite shores of America, where he dis- 

 covered and explored the coast of West Georgia as far as 70° 44 

 N. lat., until fields of ice opposed an impenetrable barrier to his 

 progress. 



