JAMES COOK 83 
southern land previously known. The lofty snow-cov- 
ered summits were continued towards the north by a 
group of peaks, which were named Sandwich Land, in 
honour of the First Lord of the Admiralty, but the whole 
was so beset with ice as to be unapproachable in the 
thick weather that prevailed. The ship sailed northward 
for more than 200 miles in sight of the west coast of this 
new land before there was an open sea to the east- 
ward. 
Cook could not decide whether this chain of peaks was 
a line of islands or a promontory of the southern land. 
He felt convinced that an extensive land lay to the south 
for he could not otherwise account for the vast abundance 
of ice and for its unequal extension northward in differ- 
ent positions. This led him to expect that the snow- 
covered continent extended farthest to the north opposite 
the Southern Atlantic and the Indian oceans. 
From near Sandwich Land in 58° S., 27 0 W., Cook 
steered due east to the meridian of Greenwich and then 
northeastward to the assigned latitude of Cape Circum- 
cision, resolved this time not to let Bouvet’s Island slip 
if it really existed, as he now believed it did. The great 
navigator, however, did not sufficiently allow for 
Bouvet’s difficulties with the longitude, and his careful 
search from 6° E. to 22 0 E. was, of course, unavailing. 
This part of the ocean was found to be much less en- 
cumbered by ice than in 1772. Crossing their outward 
track south of South Africa, Cook’s sailors could boast 
that they had not only put a girdle round the Earth 
farther south than it had ever been circled before, but 
that they had enough track over to tie a knot on it. Cook 
himself observed with quiet satisfaction that Mr. Dal- 
rymple’s coast-line of a southern continent in the South 
