JAMES COOK 71 
to the southeast in conformity with the Instructions. 
Several cases of scurvy occurred and were checked by 
the use of sweet worts. Christmas had been celebrated 
by the crew, who had been saving up their daily ration 
of spirits for weeks before, “ with savage noise and 
drunkenness/' to quote the words of the younger Forster. 
No doubt some of the noise was due to the performance 
of a Highlander amongst the crew who had brought his 
bagpipes to rouse the echoes of the bergs, and who after- 
wards played a considerable part in charming the shy 
natives of the tropical islands with the music of the 
north. 
The Forsters seem to have been but little suited 
for the life of exploring naturalists. Their cabins were 
the worst on board, they declared, and the bedding never 
dry ; the misery of the monotonous days impressed them 
deeply. “ We were almost perpetually wrapped in thick 
fogs,” they lamented, “ beaten with showers of rain, sleet, 
hail, and snow, surrounded by innumerable islands of 
ice, against which we daily ran the risk of being ship- 
wrecked, and forced to live upon salt provisions, which 
concurred with the cold and wet to infect the mass of 
our blood.” 
January 17th, 1773, was an epoch in the world's his- 
tory, for just before noon on that day the Antarctic 
circle was first crossed by human beings. The southern 
frigid zone foreseen by Aristotle, reasoned on by the 
Greek philosophers, who declared it existent but inacces- 
sible, denied and stigmatised as heretical by the mediaeval 
Church, never hitherto deliberately sought for, had at 
last been entered by the Resolution and Adventure in 
an open sea with only one iceberg in sight. Cook had now 
outdistanced all his predecessors ; but the attempt to push 
