Here it may be at once announced that this inquiry into the published Voyage of the _Endeavour_ through the pen of Dr. Hawkesworth, has little to do with Cook as a man and a navigator. The story was written by a literary man, commanded or selected, and the Grand Old Sailor who has for so long a time engrossed the affectionate interest and respectful regard of all Australians, as the discoverer, or, if you will, the re-discoverer of the eastern side of New Holland, will not suffer in our esteem by the criticism of a book about the voyage. Though that side happened to be that chosen for the New South Wales early settlement, yet the people of South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, New Zealand, and Tasmania, with its emigrating offspring of Port Phillip--now Victoria--lands first seen by Hollanders a century or more before Cook was born, have the like reverence as those of Sydney for the indirect cause of British extension in those Southern Colonies. Canada is as indebted to the scientific pilot of the St. Lawrence for the addition of its western woodlands to the British Empire, as the continent and islands of Australia may be to the Yorkshire mariner on the Pacific, for their occupation by our countrymen under the Crown. No one who reads with pleasure the Voyage of the _Resolution_, about which no doubts ever existed, will think the less of James Cook, because the narrative of the _Endeavour_ had the misfortune to be prepared, in his absence, by a less capable historian. As the worthy Captain always candidly acknowledged his inability, from defective education, and from absorption in seamanlike pursuits from his early boyhood, to tell his own tale, we naturally wonder how Dr. Hawkesworth compiled the adventurous voyage of the _Endeavour_. The natural answer would be _the Logs and Journals of the voyagers_. Cook himself wrote very little, but there are now in existence several Journals attributed to him, or written under his direction. Those in the so-called _Queen's_ Log, the _Admiralty_ Log, the British _Museum_ Log (presented by Banks), and that one in the possession of the Hudson family at Sunderland. There is, also, in the British Museum one precious _Autograph Log_ whose records included the Australian portion of the voyage, in _Cook's handwriting_, and the only one extant which we expect can claim to be written by himself. Others are _reported_ copies, by ships' clerks, sent home from Java. What great differences may be observed even in these Logs? or, in what way does the official "Cook's Voyage" differ from any of them? The most important points are those affecting the names of BOTANY BAY and NEW SOUTH WALES, with the language used in taking _possession_ of the new TERRITORY. We have next to consider whether there are Logs remaining which were compiled by officers of the ship _Endeavour_.