[Footnote 32: Dr Douglas refers to the introduction to Lord Mulgrave's Journal for a history of former attempts to sail toward the North Pole; and to Barrington's Miscellanies for several instances of ships reaching very high north latitudes.--E.] The operations proposed to be pursued were so new, so extensive, and so various, that the skill and experience of Captain Cook, it was thought, would be requisite to conduct them. Without being liable to any charge of want of zeal for the public service, he might have passed the rest of his days in the command to which he had been appointed in Greenwich Hospital, there to enjoy the fame he had dearly earned in two circumnavigations of the world. But he cheerfully relinquished this honourable station at home; and, happy that the Earl of Sandwich had not cast his eye upon any other commander, engaged in the conduct of the expedition, the history of which is now given, an expedition that would expose him to the toils and perils of a third circumnavigation, by a track hitherto unattempted.[33] Every former navigator round the globe had made his passage home to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope; the arduous task was now assigned to Captain Cook of attempting it, by reaching the high northern latitudes between Asia and America. So that the usual plan of discovery was reversed; and, instead of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, one from the latter into the former was to be tried. For it was wisely foreseen, that whatever openings or inlets there might be on the east side of America, which lie in a direction that could give any hopes of a passage, the ultimate success of it would still depend upon there being an open sea between the west side of that continent and the extremities of Asia. Captain Cook, therefore, was ordered to proceed into the Pacific Ocean, through the chain of his new islands in the southern tropic; and, having crossed the equator into its northern parts, then to hold such a course as might probably fix many interesting points in geography, and produce intermediate discoveries, in his progress northward to the principal scene of his operations.