XX 
INTRODUCTION. 
ready Hated to the reader. But the general fearch now 
made, throughout the whole Southern hemifphere, as be¬ 
ing the principal object in view, hath been referved for 
this feparate article. Here, indeed, we are not to take 
notice of lands that have been difcovered, but of feas fail¬ 
ed through, where lands had been fuppofed to exift. In 
tracing the route of the Refolution and Adventure, through¬ 
out the South Atlantic, the South Indian, and the South 
Pacific Oceans that environ the globe, and combining it 
with the route of the Endeavour, we receive what may be 
called ocular demonftration, that Captain Cook, in his per- 
fevering refearches, failed over many an extenfive conti¬ 
nent, which, though fuppofed to have been feen by for¬ 
mer navigators, at the approach of his fhips, funk into the 
bofom of the ocean, and, like the bafelefs fabric of a vifion , 
left not a rack behind *. It has been urged, that the exift- 
ence 
I 
* It muft be obferved, however, that Monfleur le Monier, in the Memoirs of the 
French Academy of Sciences for 1776, pleads for the exiftence of Cape Circumcifion, 
feen by Bouvet in 1738, which our Englifh navigator fought for in vain, and fuppofes to 
have been only an illand of ice. Mr. Wales, in a paper read before the Royal Society, 
very forcibly replied to M. le Monier’s objedtions ; and tire attack having been repeated, 
he has drawn up a more extended defence of this part of Captain Cook’s Journal, which 
he bath very obligingly communicated, and is here inferted. 
Arguments, tending to prove that Captain Cook fought for Cape Circumcifion under the proper 
Meridian ; and that the Objections which have been made to his QonduCl , in this refped , are 
not vcell founded. 
In the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris for 1776, printed in 1779, 
M. Le Monier has made fome remarks, with a defign to fhew drat Captain Cook fought 
the land, ufually called Cape Circumcifion, in a wrong place ; and that, inftead of looking 
for it under the meridian of 9 0 f or io° of Eaft longitude, he ought to have looked for it 
under a meridian which is only 3 0 , or 3 0 \ to the Eaftward of the meridian of Green¬ 
wich : and confequently that this land may exift, notwithftanding all that has yet been 
