62 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
still unknown; but the description of the ideal man of 
action to whom the work is presented agrees, however 
reluctant the author might be to admit it, with no one in 
all the range of history so well as with Cook himself. 
On Cook's return all the logs and other documents of 
the expedition were handed over to a ponderous man 
of letters, Dr. Hawkesworth, to be put into literary form 
by him and combined in one work with the narratives of 
the circumnavigations of Byron, Wallis, and Carteret. 
They were accordingly clothed with a wealth of classical 
imagery and interspersed with trite moral reflections in 
a manner adapted to the taste of the period, and the plain 
tale of Cook's own log was actually left unpublished for 
one hundred and thirty years, while, incredible as it may 
seem, the description of some of the scientific col- 
lections of the voyage with the plates engraved at the 
time are only now appearing in the twentieth century. 
Despite its defects no book ever became more popular at 
once and for all time and in all languages than Cook’s 
First Voyage, and we find Robert Burns in 1785 speak- 
ing of “ some unkenned o’ isle beside New Holland,” 
as a simile that would be familiar to his peasant neigh- 
bours in Ayrshire. 
Dalrymple now formed the resolve to undertake the 
search for the southern continent. He proposed to 
associate some of his friends with himself and to bear the 
expense jointly, but he first applied to the Government 
for a concession of all unoccupied lands he might find in 
the course of five years between the equator and 6o° S. 
Two letters on this subject written in 1772 to Lord 
North were never answered, the concession was not 
granted, the expedition did not sail. What sort of in- 
ducements Dalrympie held out may be understood from 
