The extended review we have taken of the preceding voyages, and the general outline we have sketched out, of the transactions of the last, which are recorded at full length in these volumes, will not, it is hoped, be considered as a prolix or unnecessary detail. It will serve to give a just notion of the whole plan of discovery executed by his majesty's commands. And it appearing that much was aimed at, and much accomplished, in the unknown parts of the globe, in both hemispheres, there needs no other consideration, to give full satisfaction to those who possess an enlarged way of thinking, that a variety of useful purposes must have been effected by these researches. But there are others, no doubt, who, too diffident of their own abilities, or too indolent to exert them, would wish to have their reflections assisted, by pointing out what those useful purposes are. For the service of such, the following enumeration of particulars is entered upon. And if there should be any, who affect to undervalue the plan or the execution of our voyages, what shall now be offered, if it do not convince them, may, at least, check the influence of their unfavourable decision. 1. It may be fairly considered, as one great advantage accruing to the world from our late surveys of the globe, that they have confuted fanciful theories, too likely to give birth to impracticable undertakings. After Captain Cook's persevering and fruitless traverses through every corner of the southern hemisphere, who, for the future, will pay any attention to the ingenious reveries of Campbell, de Brosses, and de Buffon? or hope to establish an intercourse with such a continent as Manpertuis's fruitful imagination had pictured? A continent equal, at least, in extent, to all the civilized countries in the known northern hemisphere, where new men, new animals, new productions of every kind, might be brought forward to our view, and discoveries be made, which would open inexhaustible treasures of commerce?[48] We can now boldly take it upon us to discourage all expeditions, formed on such reasonings of speculative philosophers, into a quarter of the globe, where our persevering English navigator, instead of this promised fairy land, found nothing but barren rocks, scarcely affording shelter to penguins and seals; and dreary seas, and mountains of ice, occupying the immense space allotted to imaginary paradises, and the only treasures there to be discovered, to reward the toil, and to compensate the dangers, of the unavailing search. [Footnote 48: See Maupertuis's Letter to the King of Prussia. The author of the Preliminary Discourse to Bougainville's _Voyage aux Isles Malouines_, computes that the southern continent (for the existence of which, he owns, we must depend more on the conjectures of philosophers, than on the testimony of voyagers) contains eight or ten millions of square leagues.--D.]