INTRODUCTION. 
xvi 
Cook’s voyage in the Endeavour, has totally deftroyed this 
luppofition. Though Tafman mull ftill have the credit 
of having fir ft feen New Zealand; to Captain Cook folely 
belongs that of having really explored it. He fpent near 
fix months upon its coafts in 1769 and 1770*, circumna¬ 
vigated it completely, and afcertained its extent and divi- 
fion into two illands +. Repeated viftts ftnce that, have 
perfected this important difcovery, which though now 
known to be no part of a Southern continent, will, proba¬ 
bly, in all future charts of the world, be diftinguifhed as 
the largeft illands that exift in that part of the Southern 
hemifphere. 
5. Whether New Holland did or did not join to New 
Guinea, was a queftion involved in much doubt and un¬ 
certainty, before Captain Cook’s failing between them, 
through Endeavour Strait, decided it. We will not heft- 
tate to call this an important acquisition to geography. For 
though the great fagacity and extenfive reading of Mr. 
Dalrymple, had difcovered fome traces of fuch a paftage 
having been found before j, yet thefe traces were fo ob- 
fcure, and fo little known in the prefent age, that they had 
not generally regulated the conftruftion of our charts ; the 
Preftdent de Broftes §, who wrote in 1756, and was well 
verfed in geographical refearches, had not been able to 
* From October 6, 1769, to March 31, 1770. 
f Its Southern extremity nearly in latitude 47 0 , and its Northern in 34 0 f. See Cap¬ 
tain Cook’s chart, in Hawkefworth, Vol. ii. p. 281. 
J See the track of Torre, in one of Quiros’s {hips, in 1606, between New Holland 
and New Guinea, upon Mr. Dalrymple’s Chart of Difcoveries in the South Pacific 
Ocean, before 1764. 
§ M. de Broffes fays of New Guinea: tc C’eft une longue ifie, ou prefqu’ ifle, fi elle 
touche a la Nouvelle Hollande.” Navigations aux Torres Aujlrales , Tom. i. p. 434. 
fatisfy 
