Not long after Cook's return to England in July, 1771, he was appointed to command a ship of 462 tons, built at Whitby by the same person who had constructed the Endeavour.[91] She was named the Resolution, and with her was associated a smaller vessel of 336 tons, called the Adventure. Almost immediately after Cook's return it had been decided by the Admiralty to equip a still better furnished expedition to complete the discovery of the Southern Hemisphere. A lieutenant who had sailed with Captain Wallis in 1766, Tobias Furneaux (no doubt a descendant of French Huguenots), had been promoted to command the Adventure. At first it was thought that the expedition should be accompanied by Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks and a number of assistants, who should make a careful examination of the botany and zoology of the countries to be visited by the ship under Cook's command. And Banks spent several thousand pounds in getting his share of the expedition ready, the British Government being then, as now, very loath to spend much money on these branches of scientific research, in the value of which it is only beginning to believe. But at the last moment difficulties were put in Banks's way. He was offered so little accommodation on the Resolution that he decided not to accompany Captain Cook, and went later on to Iceland instead.

Still more determined to combat scurvy, Cook included amongst his stores such things as malt and a concentrated extract of wort and beer, which, diluted with water, might in fact make for the men throughout the voyage a drink of a wholesome and a palatable nature. They also took sour crout (cabbage cut up and pickled with salt, juniper berries, and aniseed) and salted cabbage, orange and lemon peel, mustard, and "marmalade of carrots". This was the juice of yellow carrots evaporated until it was as thick as honey or treacle, and it had been strongly recommended by a learned person of Berlin as being a great remedy for scurvy, but when put to the test was not found to be of much use.

A landscape painter, William Hodges, was appointed to this expedition in order to make drawings and paintings of the scenery and people of the countries which might be visited, and in place of Joseph Banks and his party a naturalist of German extraction—John Rheinhold Forster—and his son,[92] were both engaged to make botanical and zoological researches. (At the Cape of Good Hope, Cook also allowed Forster to engage in this department a Swedish naturalist, Sparrman.) The expedition, which was to search, amongst other things, for the South Pole, left England at the end of June, 1772, called at the Cape of Good Hope, and then directed its course to the south-east, getting amongst icebergs, over which the terrific waves of the Southern Ocean broke even when they were 60 feet high, soon after it had passed the fortieth degree of south latitude. Cook had been preceded in these waters nearly forty years before by the French navigator Bouvet, who had reported the existence of land in the far south. But Cook, on this voyage, though he penetrated as far south as 64°, did not even encounter one or other of the island groups which dot the surface of the ocean at rare intervals between South Africa and Antarctica. Yet he must have been near these islands, some of which he discovered on his next voyage, on account of the abundance of sea birds which they saw, including penguins, which never travel out into the ocean far from land.

The expedition sighted the coast of the South Island of New Zealand on 20 March, 1773, and anchored in Dusky Bay on the following day, having been 117 days at sea, and sailed 10,980 miles without once seeing land. Yet only one man had been seriously ill with scurvy on this long voyage, and the excellent health of the ship's crew is justly attributed to the antiscorbutics they had carried with them, especially to the weak beer and to the portable broth. Immediately after they came to an anchor in Dusky Bay one of the ship's officers killed a seal (of which there were many lying about on the rocks), the meat of which was most welcome to the messes. Cook had brought with him numbers of domestic animals and birds from England to introduce into these new lands, but a good many of them had been killed by the stormy and cold weather through which the expedition had passed, and had even suffered from a form of scurvy, so that when the sheep, for example, were landed in New Zealand their teeth were so loose and their gums so tender that they could not masticate the grass of the country, and could only feed feebly on leaves. The geese were landed on the South Island of New Zealand in the hope that they might increase and multiply and so furnish this part of the world with a valuable domestic bird. But apparently they died out without leaving any issue, and about the only creature that Cook's expedition succeeded in introducing permanently into New Zealand was the pig. But this part of New Zealand was found to abound in native ducks of five different kinds.

"The largest are as big as a Muscovy duck, with a very beautiful variegated plumage, on which account we called it the painted duck: both male and female have a large white spot on each wing; the head and neck of the latter is white, but all the other feathers, as well as those on the head and neck of the drake, are of a dark variegated colour.[93] The second sort have a brown plumage, with bright-green feathers in their wings, and are about the size of an English tame duck. The third sort is the blue-grey duck or 'whistling duck', as some called them from the whistling noise they made. What is most remarkable in these is that the end of their beaks is soft, and of a skinny, or more properly, cartilaginous substance. The fourth sort is something bigger than teal, and all black except the drake, which has some white feathers in his wing."[93]

Cook also noticed the characteristic wingless rails of New Zealand, which he called wood hens. "As they cannot fly they inhabit the skirts of the woods, and feed on the seabeach; and are so very tame or foolish as to stand and stare at us till we knocked them down with a stick."[94] The natives were even then fast destroying them. Amongst the small birds Cook particularizes the wattle-bird, poË-bird, and fan-tail, on account of their singularities of form and plumage.[95]

In Pickersgill Harbour, close by, the seamen thought that they descried a small mammal about the size of a cat, mouse-coloured, and with short legs and a bushy tail, "more like a jackal than any animal they knew". This may have been a runaway dog, of degenerate type, belonging to the natives; or just possibly some mammal indigenous to New Zealand which soon afterwards became extinct. Yet with the exception of bats (and the dogs and rats introduced by the natives, and the seals which frequented the seacoasts), no indigenous beast has ever been discovered in New Zealand, either existing there in the past or at the time of its discovery.

During the stay of the expedition at Dusky Bay and elsewhere in the South Island the small black sandflies were a serious pest. Wherever they bit they caused a swelling and such intolerable itching that many of the people who had landed were at last covered with ulcers like smallpox. Nevertheless the whole crew soon became strong and vigorous. A local conifer, styled a "spruce" by Cook, but in reality a Phyllocladus, furnished an astringent beer in a decoction of its leaves, the bitterness of which was tempered by using an equal quantity of the tea plant.[96]

On the way north from Dusky Bay towards Queen Charlotte Sound, six or seven waterspouts were seen. According to Cook, they were caused by whirlwinds which created a kind of funnel or tube of water, which ascended in a spiral stream up to the clouds. In one of them a bird had been enclosed, which the seamen saw being whirled round and round as it was carried upwards. It appeared to Cook that, although these spouts reached the clouds, it was not from the rainwater of the clouds being drawn down to them, but by the column of whirling water ascending from the sea to the clouds above.

When in the southern Indian Ocean Cook had arranged with Captain Furneaux that if they should be separated by weather (as they were) they should rendezvous at Queen Charlotte Sound. The Adventure was separated from the Resolution, and after searching for her in vain set out on a lonely voyage of 4200 miles through an utterly unknown sea and reduced to an allowance of 1 quart of fresh water a day. They steered for Tasmania, reached the south coast of that island, and landed there on 10 March, 1773, finding the soil very rich and the country well clothed with woods, and plenty of water falling from the rocks in brilliant cascades 200 or 300 feet perpendicularly into the sea. They were the second white men to land in Tasmania. The Adventure anchored for five days in the bay since called after her. The trees of the forest they found mostly burnt or scorched near the ground, owing to the natives setting fire to the underwood, so as to make passage easy through the forest. There seemed to be little variety of trees, which were mostly of the eucalyptus kind; but there was an abundance of birds, Australian "crows" with their sharp white beaks, several kinds of duck, parakeets, and a large white bird about the size of a small eagle and very like one.[97] As for beasts, they only saw one, which was a kind of opossum (phalanger), but from the traces they saw of others (kangarus) they believed the land to contain deer. There were many signs of the natives—rough wigwams or huts,[98] in which there were bags and nets made of grass, stones and tinder for striking fire, spears sharpened at the end with a shell or stone—but the people themselves kept out of the way of the Europeans and were not once seen.

The Adventure after this repose skirted the coast and islands of Tasmania, as far as the opening of Bass's Strait and the string of islands named after Captain Furneaux. The last-named did not ascertain definitely that Tasmania was an island and not any longer a peninsula of Australia. From a point very near the Australian coast the Adventure sailed straight across to New Zealand and duly rejoined the Resolution in Queen Charlotte Sound. The crews of both ships felt "uncommon joy at their meeting" after a separation of fourteen weeks.

From New Zealand the two ships made their way to Tahiti. On arriving there the Tahitians enquired about Tupia, the invaluable interpreter on the first voyage; but his friends and relations were quite satisfied when an account of his death at Batavia was given to them. Civil wars had brought about certain changes in the government of the island, and one of the most prominent chiefs known to the Endeavour expedition was dead. This was Tutaha, and his mother came to meet Cook, bursting into tears as she seized him by both hands, and said: "Tutaha Tutayo no Tuti, matti!" (Tutaha, the friend of Cook, is dead).

Goats were landed on this island to introduce a breed of valuable domestic animals. The expedition then passed on to the adjoining island of Huahine, and here they obtained another invaluable interpreter for their further voyages—Omai, a native of the island of Ulieta, and of rather negroid or Melanesian type, but a most useful member of Cook's second and third expeditions.

In the interval between Cook's first and second visits to Tahiti a Spanish ship had called at that island and had introduced several noxious European diseases. The degeneration and depopulation of the Society Islands was about to begin, and even their food supplies were beginning to get short, owing to the demands made on them for pigs and fowls by European ships, and by the civil wars which caused much loss of live stock.

From the Society Islands the Resolution and Adventure sailed westward, discovered Hervey's Island, and rediscovered the Tonga archipelago already visited by Tasman. Here they met with such a kindly reception, the natives coming out to meet them in canoes,[99] and running along the shore displaying small white flags, that the group was afterwards christened the "Friendly Isles". [The Tonga archipelago under a native king is now a British protectorate.] The people supplied them with abundance of fowls, pigs, bananas, and coconuts.

Cook gives the following description of a house of worship on Tongatabu Island built on an artificial mound about 18 feet above the level of the ground:—

It was of an oblong shape and enclosed by a wall or parapet of stone about 3 feet in height. From this wall the mound rose with a gentle slope and was covered with green turf, and on the top of it stood the house.... Three elderly men came and seated themselves between the Europeans and the temple and began a kind of prayer, which lasted about ten minutes, then led the way so that the house of worship might be examined. In front there were two stone steps leading to the top of the wall. From this the ascent to the house was easy. It was surrounded by a fine gravel walk and was built in all respects like a dwelling-house of the country, with poles and rafters, and covered with palm thatch, with eaves coming down to within 3 feet of the ground, and sides or walls made of strong matting. The floor of the house was laid with fine gravel, except in the middle, where there was an oblong square of blue pebbles raised about 6 inches higher than the floor. In two corners of the house stood images rudely carved in wood, which did not seem to be treated by the natives with much respect. The space of blue pebbles was a sort of altar, and on this the Europeans laid their offerings of things that the natives would be likely to prize.

Cook describes Tongatabu Island as a little paradise. There was not an inch of wasted land. The beautifully made roads occupied no more space than was absolutely necessary, the fences were only about 4 inches wide and mostly consisted of useful trees or plants, and the ground round the houses and temples was planted with large and shady fruit trees, which besides the customary bread-fruits, coconuts, and the Tahiti ahiya, included shaddocks (a large kind of orange). The people also grew sugar cane and made pottery. They were of the same good-looking Polynesian type as those of Tahiti. The men applied dyes to their abundant crops of head hair, which either bleached it white or stained it red, or even blue. They had here the custom so widespread in North America, and amongst the Bushmen of South Africa and the people of Australia, of mutilating the fingers, especially the little finger, by cutting off the two first joints to mark their mourning for children, husbands, or wives.

Cook also noticed the lepers of the Tonga archipelago, some of whom had the whole face and nose reduced to dreadful smooth scabs, surrounding nearly embedded eyes, and emitting an intolerable stench.

From Tongatabu the two ships sailed to New Zealand, and on the journey the Adventure was lost sight of. Cook, unable to wait (after searching for this ship along the coasts of New Zealand), left messages behind in bottles, buried in the camps to which they had most resorted, and then, on 26 November, 1773, sailed once more into the Southern Pacific to search for Antarctica. He reached ultimately to latitudes as high as 72°, where he found vast mountains of ice or land covered with ice. He had, in fact, probably reached the coast of Wilkes's Land. Some of the innumerable ice islands they passed on this southern voyage could not have been less than 200 feet in height, and terminated in peaks like cupolas or domes.

Being now well satisfied that no land was to be found in this direction, except unapproachable through icefields and quite uninhabitable, Cook turned his vessel to the north to reach the Tropics once again, and on 13 March, 1774, anchored off Easter Island,[100] where the ship was at once met by a canoe paddled by two men, who brought out a bunch of plantains. This gave the crew of the Resolution a good opinion of the Easter Islanders, who, as we know, were not unfamiliar with Europeans, having been visited already by Spaniards and Dutchmen. In fact, when they landed they found one man with a good broad-brimmed European hat on, whilst another wore a Spanish jacket, and a third a red silk handkerchief. The people, though very friendly, were rather thievish, not only towards the European, but each other. For instance, finding that Cook's party was very willing to buy sweet potatoes, they unhesitatingly raided a man's plantation near the landing place, and sold them for what they could get.

Cook, being ill himself at the time, sent a party of officers to explore Easter Island thoroughly. They had not proceeded far on their journey before a middle-aged man, tatued from head to foot, and his face painted with a white pigment, appeared with a spear in his hand, on which he hoisted a piece of white cloth as an emblem of peace. He then drove away a crowd of natives that followed, and constituted himself a guide. The surface of the island appeared to be a barren, dried, hard clay covered with stones, except where the natives had cleared the ground and made plantations of sweet potatoes or had planted banana groves. On the highest part of the south end of the island the soil was a fine red earth and more fruitful, bearing a longer grass, and was not strewn with stones. But the most remarkable feature in this somewhat desolate island, which has an area of about 45 square miles, were the statues of stone and ruins of masonry. These were mainly on the east side of the island and near the sea. Here the officers of the Resolution met with three platforms of stonework, and on each had stood four large stone statues, mostly, however, now lying prone on the ground and some broken. Each statue[101] had on its head a large cylindrical stone of red colour, wrought into a perfectly circular form. One of these stone statues was 27 feet long and 8 feet across the breadth of the shoulders, yet there were others larger than this still standing, one of them so big that its shade at two in the afternoon was sufficient to shelter the whole party of twenty persons from the rays of the sun.

Throughout the whole island there was scarcely any supply of really fresh, sweet water. In fact this landing party only met with one such pool or well, and this was very dirty, owing to the habit of the natives going there to drink and at the same time washing themselves all over. If a numerous party came up for this purpose the first arrival leapt right into the middle of the hole, drank, washed himself without the least ceremony, and then gave up his place to another, so that the lastcomer had a very filthy liquid to quench his thirst. But for the most part the wells or watering places were brackish or even salt. The natives seemed to drink the salt water without any reluctance.

In the course of this journey taken by the party from the Resolution the natives frequently came up with roasted potatoes, sugar cane, and supplies of water. They distributed these supplies of food and drink with great punctiliousness, being careful that those in the rear should be as well served as those in front of the expedition. Yet all the time they were taking trouble to minister to the wants of the white men they endeavoured to steal from them by snatching at their bags or any loose gear which they could easily detach from their persons; so much so that at last it was necessary to fire a musket loaded with small shot, which did not in the least interrupt the otherwise friendly relations.

On the whole the natives of Easter Island (Rapanui, Hwaihu, and Teapai, as it was sometimes called) were living in a somewhat miserable condition when revisited by Cook, as though they had very much degenerated. Their food supply was poor, not even fish being abundant on the coasts. They had a few fowls and rats, and lived chiefly on sweet potatoes, yams, pumpkins or gourds, bananas, and sugar cane. The speciality of the island was the sweet potato, which Cook thought the best he had ever tasted. It seemed to Cook as though there were not more than 700 natives left on this island (probably there were then from 2000 to 3000). Their houses were low, miserable huts, or a kind of vault built of stone partly underground. Their fuel (as there were scarcely any trees left in the island) consisted of grass, and, above all, the stalks of the sugar cane. They had a few canoes made of boards, and it was a mystery where they could have got the wood from which to build them, unless it was driftwood.

But of course the greatest mystery of the island, then as now, were the stone terraces and platforms and the gigantic stone statues. The workmanship of the mortarless masonry appeared to the officers of the Resolution to be not inferior to the best stonebuilding work then known in England. The stones were morticed and fitted into one another in a very artful manner. The side walls were not perpendicular, but inclined inwards. The statues were, as a rule, erected on these stone platforms. It is noteworthy that the ears of these stone figures had their lobes prolonged downwards out of all proportion, but resembling closely the artificially elongated ears of the living Easter Islanders. Another puzzle was how the red stone cylinders could have been placed on the tops of the heads of these statues when they stood sometimes 25 feet or more above the ground. It must have required also considerable art to raise these immense carved stones to a perpendicular position. The statues did not seem to be regarded as idols by the people, but as the memorials of dead chiefs, and to have been in some way connected with the burial places of notabilities. The stonework on this island, nearly 1400 miles from the nearest land—Pitcairn—which has also remains of a similar nature, remains one of the world's great unsolved mysteries in the history of the human species, and it is remarkable that such small effort has been made by excavation to find some clue as to the origin and affinities of this vanished race of stonebuilders, whose works stretch across the Pacific from the Ladrone Islands to Easter Island.

From Easter Island, Cook proceeded to the Marquezas archipelago, already known through the explorations of the Spaniards. Here the natives were of the usual type of friendly, boisterous thieves, not provoked to much dismay or anger if any of their companions were killed or wounded by the muskets which Cook was obliged to order to be fired at them, to stop their carrying off things of great importance to the ship. All the islands and most of the ports bore Spanish names. The people were Polynesians, but far better supplied with food products than the miserable Easter Islanders. They had pigs, fowls, bananas, yams, numerous edible roots, bread-fruit, and coconuts.

From the Marquezas the Resolution sailed back to Tahiti, and, after another visit round most of the Society Islands [where Cook's relations with the natives were so peculiarly cordial and intimate that he left them with some shedding of tears on both sides and many appeals and promises to return], once more sailed for New Zealand. On the way thither, Howe Island and Savage Island (so called because of the ferocious attack made on a landing party by the natives) were discovered and named. The Resolution visited the northern islands of the Tonga group, but curiously missed seeing the large islands of Fiji, though Cook discovered and named Turtle Island, the southernmost of the group, on his voyage from the Friendly Islands to the New Hebrides. In like manner Cook never visited the Samoan archipelago, though, with these two exceptions, he was the discoverer or rediscoverer of almost all the Pacific islands.

The Resolution reached the New Hebrides archipelago in July, 1774. The first island at which any stay was made was the second largest of the group, Mallikolo. The people of this island and of the rest of the group Cook at once saw were markedly different from the tall, handsome, European-like Polynesians. They seemed to their discoverers the most ugly and ill-proportioned people they had ever seen; very dark-coloured and rather diminutive, with long heads, flat faces, and monkey countenances. Their hair, black or brown, was short and curly, though not so tightly curled as that of a negro. They had strong, crisp, and bushy beards. What added to their deformity was a belt or cord which they wore round the waist, tied so tightly that they were wasp-waisted. The men practically went quite naked, but the women, who were not less ugly than the men, and had their heads, faces, and shoulders painted red, wore a kind of petticoat and a bag over their shoulders in which they carried their infants. They had ear-rings and bracelets of tortoiseshell, and armlets made of thread and studded with shells; the bridge of the nose was pierced, and through it was thrust a circular piece of white stone. They were armed with wooden clubs and spears, bows and arrows, and the bow, which was about 4 feet long, was remarkable for not being circular, but had a great bend in its lower half, so that the bow and bowstring together in outline were like the half of a pear cut lengthwise. The arrows were reeds pointed with hard wood or bone, and the tips were covered with a poisonous substance. Their language was utterly different from that of the Polynesians, and it was noticed that they expressed their admiration by hissing like a goose. They had no dogs or domestic animals of any kind apparently (probably, however, they had fowls, like the New Caledonians).

At another of the islands, Efate, an attempt was made to lure them on shore, no doubt believing that their weapons were ineffective, and that they might be easily robbed, killed, and eaten. But at Tanna Island, the southernmost of the group, pleasant relations were entered into with the people, who were of a somewhat different race and spoke a different language to those of Mallikolo. They were taller, better shaped, and with more agreeable features, and were no doubt mixed with Polynesian blood. Their skin colour was very dark, their hair curly and crisp. They had pigs, but no knowledge of dogs, goats, or cats, calling them all pigs. They were frankly cannibals, and asked Cook and his people if they did not also eat human flesh.

There was an active volcano on this island which during the stay of the Resolution vomited up vast quantities of fire and smoke, making at every eruption a long rumbling noise, like that of thunder or the explosion of mines. The air was sometimes loaded with ashes or a kind of fine sand, and it was exceedingly troublesome to the eyes. The volcano also hurled huge masses of rock into the air, and when it rained it rained mud, on account of the degree to which the atmosphere was charged with sand and dust. Whichever way the wind was the ship's crew were plagued with the fall of ashes. Nevertheless the natives seemed quite indifferent to these volcanic manifestations. Unfortunately, at the close of their stay at Tanna, their relations with the natives ceased to be friendly, owing to the inexcusable shooting of one of them by a sentry. Cook throughout his books has to complain on several occasions of the frequency with which the marines, or even the midshipmen, fired at the natives without sufficient cause.

From Tanna the Resolution sailed north to the large island of Espiritu Santo, and stayed in St. Philip's Bay, the harbour discovered by de Quiros. The natives of this island were very dark-skinned, and their hair short and woolly, yet there were others of more Polynesian appearance, with long hair tied up on the crown of the head and ornamented with feathers like the headdresses of the New Zealanders. These taller people spoke a language apparently of a Polynesian type. Their canoes had outriggers.

Sailing away from the New Hebrides in the direction of New Zealand, land was discovered to the south on 4 September (1774). This was the large island named by Cook New Caledonia. The people were found to be obliging and civil, and with little reluctance came off to the ship to receive presents and to bring supplies of fresh food for sale. They had not the least knowledge of pigs, goats, dogs, or cats, and not even a name for one of them, but had apparently (so it is stated in Cook's journal) domestic fowls of a large breed. The men went naked, but were nevertheless much attracted by presents of cloth, especially if it was red in colour. When Cook landed he was received by a vast concourse of people almost entirely unarmed and very attentive to the orders of their chief. But the country was not so attractive in appearance as the beautiful Pacific archipelagos farther north and east. Cook at once noted in his journal that "it bore in general a great resemblance to parts of New Holland (Australia) under the same latitude", the forest being without any underwood and the trees being of much the same species [there are, however, no Eucalypti in New Caledonia]. The mountains and other high places seemed for the most part incapable of cultivation, consisting chiefly of rocks, the little on them being scorched and burnt up by the sun, though it bore tufts of coarse grass and a few trees and shrubs.

Whilst anchored off New Caledonia Cook very nearly lost his life from eating a fish of a poisonous nature. "It was of a new species something like a sunfish, with a large, long, ugly head. Having no suspicion of its being of a poisonous nature, we ordered it to be dressed for supper; but very luckily the operation of drawing and describing it (undertaken by Mr. Forster) took up so much time that only the liver and the row were dressed", of which the two Forsters and Cook merely tasted a little. But about three in the morning they were seized with an extraordinary weakness and numbness, and almost lost the sense of feeling. They could not distinguish between light and heavy bodies, so far as they had the strength to move, a quart pot and a feather seeming to be the same in weight. They immediately took emetics, and afterwards recovered the full use of their senses; but one of the pigs on board, who had eaten a portion of the inside of the fish, died soon afterwards, and they learnt from the natives that it was a deadly food.

Besides giving the chiefs dogs for breeding purposes, Cook landed couples of pigs in order to supply this island with domestic animals.

These people of New Caledonia were very like negroes in appearance, but their head hair grew much longer and the men had abundant beards. The men went nearly naked, the women wore a short petticoat. Their language seemed to be a mixture between that of the Melanesians of the New Hebrides and the Polynesians of New Zealand. As regards weapons, they had something like a boomerang, and a wooden club shaped like a pickaxe. They used slings and stones, harpoons for striking fish, spears and darts. Their houses were circular, but kept full of smoke from the ever-burning fire in order to drive away the mosquitoes. They had clumsy dug-out canoes, generally used double, secured to each other by cross spars which projected a foot over each side. On these spars would be laid a deck or platform made of planks, on which they could even have a hearth of clay with a fire burning on it. These canoes were navigated by one or two lateen sails. Bananas and sugar cane were here, and also bread-fruit and coconuts, but all such things very scarce, and the natives lived chiefly on roots, the bark of a tree, which they roasted and chewed, and on fish. They had no other drink but water.

The coasts of New Caledonia, however, were beset with reefs and shoals, so that it was practically impossible for a sailing ship like the Resolution to make any close survey without running risks of being lost altogether. Cook therefore sailed away from New Caledonia, and discovered the Isle of Pines at its southern extremity: a series of islets, really, on which grew very tall conifers.[102] One little island, scarcely more than three-quarters of a mile round, was covered with a forest of these tall pines 60 to 70 feet in height. The wood was white, close-grained, tough and light, and exuded turpentine. On this southward cruise Cook, curiously enough, missed seeing the Loyalty Islands, which lie at no great distance to the east of New Caledonia, almost midway between New Caledonia and New Zealand. But he discovered Norfolk Island, which was uninhabited. Here his people noticed the aloe-like "flax" plant of New Zealand and a great abundance of splendid pine trees—the now celebrated Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria excelsa). The woods were full of pigeons, parrots, rails, and small birds. There were also "cabbage" palms, not thicker than a man's leg, and from 10 to 20 feet high, probably of the Areca genus, "with large pinnated fronds".

New Zealand was once more reached on 11 October, 1774. There were evident traces in Queen Charlotte Sound that the Adventure had been there. The natives received them with a certain reserve, though at first very joyfully. They told a story, however, of a white man's ship which some months ago had been beaten to pieces on the rocks. The white men had landed, but after their muskets had ceased to be of any use they had been attacked, killed, and eaten by the natives, though not by the people of Queen Charlotte Sound.[103] There being nothing now to detain Cook at New Zealand, he left Queen Charlotte Sound in November, 1774, and, sailing across the Southern Pacific, reached Tierra del Fuego, at the extremity of South America, and, after visiting the Falkland (Natives of the remotest Pacific Archipelagoes. From drawings by W. Hodges, who accompanied Captain Cook's Second Expedition) Islands and discovering the large island of South Georgia, he continued his journey round the southern waters of the globe till he reached the Cape of Good Hope, from which he made his way to England, having been absent three years and eighteen days, during which voyage he had lost but four men, and only one of them from sickness. "The nature of our voyage carried us into very high latitudes, but the hardships and dangers inseparable from that situation were in some degree compensated with the singular felicity we enjoyed in extracting inexhaustible supplies of fresh water from an ocean strewed with ice."

On Cook's return from his second voyage he received, from the hands of King George III, his commission as a post captain in the navy, and soon afterwards was appointed to be a fourth captain at the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, with a salary of £200 a year, a residence, and certain allowances, subject, however, to the right of the Admiralty to call on him for further sea service should they require him. And the call—provoked by the eagerness of Cook—was not long delayed, for in the following year (1776) he was appointed to command once more the Resolution. To this ship was added a smaller consort, the Discovery, which had a capacity of only 300 tons, to be commanded by Lieutenant Clerke, formerly of the Resolution.

In the Third Voyage, which began in the summer of 1776, the exploration of the Pacific was to be continued, but more with the intention that Cook should explore the western coast of North America and find out conclusively if there was or was not any sea way which would give a passage for ships across the North American continent.[104] The new voyage to be undertaken by the ships Resolution and Discovery was designed to proceed to the Pacific by the Cape of Good Hope across the Indian Ocean in southern latitudes, and past New Zealand and Tahiti to the west coast of North America. Rumours had begun to reach England about French discoveries in the South Indian Ocean, notably those by du Fresne and Crozet and by de KerguÉlen-TrÉmarec in 1772, which it was desirable to investigate. An interesting member of Cook's crew was a Tahitian—Omai—who had been brought to England by the Adventure, and had not been spoilt by the kindliness of his reception. Omai was to return with Cook to his native land, and proved himself as useful, plucky, good-natured, and well-mannered an interpreter as had done the unfortunate Tupia, whose bones lay buried at Batavia. After the usual stay at the Cape of Good Hope, the Resolution and Discovery made their way into the Southern Indian Ocean through mountainous seas and bitter cold weather, and discovered or rediscovered Prince Edward's Island,[105] the Marion du Fresne and the Crozet Islands, and came to an anchor off the large island in 48° S. latitude, which had been already noted by the French sea captain, de KerguÉlen-TrÉmarec. This last-mentioned island now bears KerguÉlen's name. Captain Cook and the great French explorers who had preceded him had found no vast southern continent in the Southern Indian Ocean, but all unknowing they had found the last remaining vestiges of such; for KerguÉlen, St. Paul, and Amsterdam Islands, the Crozets and Prince Edward's Islands, are the only portions remaining above the sea of a great Antarctic land which probably once united South America with Australia and New Zealand. All these scattered oceanic islands rise from what is called the KerguÉlen Plateau, a region of the bed of the Indian Ocean in which the depth does not much exceed 8000 feet.

KerguÉlen is the largest of these islands—about 1400 square miles in extent. Its mountains attain altitudes of 2400 to 6120 feet. One of them is an active volcano, and the whole of KerguÉlen has been subjected in recent times to much volcanic activity, lava having covered much of its surface. This eruption of plutonic forces seems to have followed a severe glacial period, during which the island was covered with ice. It is therefore not to be wondered at that between them fire and ice destroyed a once abundant plant growth; for KerguÉlen, in Tertiary times, maintained great forests of trees of South American affinities.

On this desolate wind-swept island of snow mountains and crumbling lava the crews of the Resolution and Discovery spent Christmas, partly to obtain fresh water ("every gully afforded a large stream") and fresh meat—the flesh of penguins and other sea birds and seals. The seals (chiefly sea elephants and sea leopards) also provided quantities of fat or blubber, from which oil was obtained for the ship's lamps. The principal feature in the vegetation (there were no trees, except fossil ones) was a plant called the KerguÉlen cabbage, actually a kind of cabbage (Pringlea antiscorbutica). This was a great boon to the ship's company, who ate it boiled and also raw in their eagerness for vegetable food. Amongst the birds of the island was a land bird, the sheathbill (Chionis), the size of a large pigeon, with white plumage, black beak, and white feet, a bird which is related both to the gulls and the plovers. There were also giant petrels, king penguins, albatrosses, gulls, cormorant and a peculiar species of teal.

On 24 January, 1777, the coast of Tasmania was sighted, and on the 27th the second party of Englishmen (the men of the Adventure being the first) landed in that southernmost portion of Australia. The following day a party of natives appeared, who approached them unarmed without betraying fear. They were quite naked and wore no ornaments, but their bodies were decorated by large weals or ridges of skin in straight or curved lines. They were of average size, rather slender, with black skins and black woolly hair. Their features were not ugly. The language was wholly unintelligible, and seemed even to be different from that of the natives of New South Wales.

After a further visit to New Zealand, and a long stay in the Friendly Islands (the Tonga archipelago) and the Society Islands, Cook turned the course of his expedition northwards, discovered Christmas Island, and sailed across a stretch of open ocean till at last, in January, 1778, he sighted a wonderful new land in the archipelago of Hawaii. To this he gave the name by which they were long afterwards known—the Sandwich Islands. After a stay in this region of eight principal islands and many islets, with its wonderful volcanoes (the highest of which is snow-crowned and 13,823 feet in altitude), its peculiar vegetation, and its Polynesian people, he passed on to the exploring of the western and north-western coasts of North America, with the results which have been described in my book on the Pioneers in Canada. Returning again southwards to continue the explorations of the Pacific archipelagos, he met his fate in a miserable skirmish on the west coast of the large island of Hawaii, the easternmost of the Hawaii group.[106]

Cook's adventures and those of his officers, after reaching northern latitudes such as the Hawaii archipelago, can scarcely be brought within the limits of Australasia, so that Cook now passes from our narrative. But he remains the most remarkable figure in the past history of Australasia. He was perhaps the greatest of British navigators, for he made not only all the most remarkable discoveries of the Pacific Ocean between the ice fringe of the Southern Continent and the Bering Straits; but he did so with singularly little hardship to his men, whose health he studied with the utmost care, while in his contact with the natives he has left behind him an admirable reputation for kindliness and sympathy. From the point of view of science he fully deserved the Fellowship of the Royal Society. The books composed from his journals read like those of modern travellers of the best type, so shrewd are his observations and so accurate his descriptions. He stands in the first rank of the world's heroes, and it is interesting to remember that, though there are not many greater Englishmen in our national records, he rose from being the son of a Yorkshire farm labourer, a boy serving out groceries in a little shop, an apprentice on board a collier, to command, as an officer in the king's navy, vessels which performed voyages far more wonderful than that of Columbus, and which revealed to the knowledge of science the coasts of the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, the Continent of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and most of the islands and archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean.