CHAPTER IV 
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF JAMES COOK 
“ My will is backed with Resolution ; 
Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.” 
— Shakespeare. 
I N the middle of the eighteenth century, as we have 
seen, the southern hemisphere figured upon all maps 
as the seat of a great continent awaiting discovery. 
The tenacity of the hold of this continent on the minds 
of geographers is somewhat remarkable and probably 
no prepossession based on such inadequate data ever 
died a harder death. It is true that a good deal of fun 
had been made throughout the centuries of this idea of 
a southern continent. Bishop Hall of Exeter in 1604 
had written a book with a title too long to quote, com- 
mencing “ Mundus alter et idem, sive Terra Australis 
antehac semper incognita/’ in which he satirised the 
vices of Europe in an imaginary southern continent, 
giving, it is said, the idea to Swift of Gulliver’s Travels. 
Other authors, Dutch, French, and Italian at various 
times enlivened literature with imaginary visits to the 
South Land, in which, however, they rarely outdid the 
fervid descriptions of Quiros. 
The last of the firm believers in the southern conti- 
nent was the fiery tempered and indefatigable con- 
troversialist Alexander Dalrymple, a figure not without 
interest in this history, though the part he played was 
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