Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/314

256 and September 1769, we met with signs of land, seaweed and a seal, which, though both of them are often seen at great distances from land, yet are not met with in open oceans, and we were at that time too far from the coast of New Zealand, and much too far from that of South America, to have supposed them to have come from either of these. The body of this land must, however, be situated in very high latitudes; a part of it may indeed come to the northward, within our track; but as we never saw any signs of land except at the time mentioned above, although I made it my particular business (as well as I believe did most of us) to look out for such, it must be prodigiously smaller in extent than the theoretical continent-makers have supposed it to be. We have by our track proved the absolute falsity of over three-fourths of their positions; and the remaining part cannot be much relied upon, but above all we have taken from them their finest groundwork, in proving New Zealand to be an island, which I believe was looked upon, even by the most thoughtful people, to be in all probability at least a part of some vast country. All this we have taken from them: the land seen by Juan Fernandez, the land seen by the Dutch squadron under L'Hermite, signs of a continent seen by Quiros, and the same by Roggeween, etc. etc., have by us been proved not to be at all related to a continent. As for their reasoning about the balancing of the two poles, which always appeared to me to be a most childish argument, we have already shorn off so much of their supposed counterbalancing land, that by their own account the south pole would already be too light, unless what we have left should be made of very ponderous materials. As much fault as I find with these gentlemen will, however, probably recoil on myself, when I, on so light grounds as those I have mentioned, again declare it to be my opinion that a southern continent exists, an opinion in favour of which I am strongly prepossessed. But foolish and weak as all prepossessions must be thought, I would not but declare myself so, lest I might be supposed to have stronger reasons which I concealed.