Page:Captain Cook's Journal during His First Voyage Round the World.djvu/27

Rh The English Buccaneers were not among these discoverers; Dampier, Woods Rogers, and others, all went from Acapulco to the Ladrones, looking out for the valuable Spanish galleons from Manila, and they added little or nothing to the knowledge of the Pacific and what it contained.

It was not therefore strange that the imagination of geographers ran riot amongst the great unknown areas. They were impressed, as they looked at the globes of the day, with the fact that, while the northern hemisphere contained much land, the southern showed either water or blank spaces; and starting with the ill-founded idea that the solid land in either hemisphere should balance, they conceived that there must be a great unknown continent in the southern part of the Pacific to make up the deficiency. This was generally designated Terra Australis Incognita, and many is the ancient chart that shows it, sketched with a free and uncontrolled hand, around the South Pole. It was held by many that Tasman had touched it in New Zealand; that Quiros had seen it near his island of Encarnacion, and again at Espiritu Santo (New Hebrides), but no one had been to see.

In George III.'s reign the desire to know more of this unknown ocean arose in England. The king himself took great interest in it, and for the first time since Queen Elizabeth's age, when Davis, Frobisher, Drake, Narborough, and others, had gone on voyages of discovery, the pursuit was renewed.

In 1764 the Dolphin and Tamor, under the command of Commodore Byron and Captain Mouat, sailed on a voyage round the world. They spent some time, as ordered, in exploring the Falkland Islands, and, after a two months' passage through Magellan Strait, they stood across the Pacific. They, however, also followed near the well-beaten track, and passing north of the Paumotus, of which they sighted a few small islands, they too made for the Ladrones. As usual, they suffered much from scurvy, and the one idea was to get to a known place to recover. Byron returned in May 1766, having added but little to the knowledge of the Pacific, and the Dolphin was again sent in the August of the same year, with the Swallow, under the command of Captains Wallis and Carteret, on a similar voyage.

They did somewhat better. After the usual struggle through the long and narrow Strait of Magellan, against the strong and contrary winds that continually blow, and which occupied four months, they got into the Pacific.

As they passed out they separated, the Dolphin outsailing the Swallow, and a dispassionate reader cannot well escape the conclusion that the senior officers unnecessarily parted company.

The Dolphin kept a little south of the usual route, fell in with