"Seeing no signs of meeting with land in these high latitudes, I stood away to the northward, and, without seeing any signs of land, I thought proper to steer for New Zealand, where I anchored in Dusky Bay on 26th March and then sailed for Queen Charlotte's Sound. Again I put to sea and stood to the south, where I met with nothing but ice and excessive cold, bad weather. Here I spent near four months beating about in high latitudes. Once I got as high as seventy-one degrees, and farther it was not possible to go for ice which lay as firm as land. Here we saw ice mountains, whose summits were lost in clouds. I was now fully satisfied that there was no Southern Continent. I nevertheless resolved to spend some time longer in these seas, and with this resolution I stood away to the north." In this second voyage Cook proved that there was no great land to the south of Terra Australis or South America, except the land of ice lying about the South Pole. But he did a greater piece of work than this. He fought, and fought successfully, the great curse of scurvy, which had hitherto carried off scores of sailors and prevented ships on voyages of discovery, or indeed ships of war, from staying long on the high seas without constantly landing for supplies of fresh food. It was no uncommon occurrence for a sea captain to return after even a few months' cruise with half his men suffering from scurvy. Captain Palliser on H.M.S. _Eagle_ in 1756 landed in Plymouth Sound with one hundred and thirty sick men out of four hundred, twenty-two having died in a month. Cook had resolved to fight this dreaded scourge, and we have already seen that during his three years' cruise of the _Endeavour_ he had only to report five cases of scurvy, so close a watch did he keep on his crews. In his second voyage he was even more particular, with the result that in the course of three years he did not lose a single man from scurvy. He enforced cold bathing, and encouraged it by example. The allowance of salt beef and pork was cut down, and the habit of mixing salt beef fat with the flour was strictly forbidden. Salt butter and cheese were stopped, and raisins were substituted for salt suet; wild celery was collected in Terra del Fuego and breakfast made from this with ground wheat and portable soup. The cleanliness of the men was insisted on. Cook never allowed any one to appear dirty before him. He inspected the men once a week at least, and saw with his own eyes that they changed their clothing; equal care was taken to keep the ship clean and dry between decks, and she was constantly "cured with fires" or "smoked with gunpowder mixed with vinegar." For a paper on this subject read before the Royal Society in 1776, James Cook was awarded a gold medal (now in the British Museum).