For the next four years or so he was regularly employed in surveying and exploring work off the Atlantic coast of America, and this of itself shows that he had already made his mark in his chosen profession. But much greater things were now to be in store for him. It will be remembered how Drake, when he first saw the smooth waters of the Pacific, prayed God that He would give him life and leave to sail an English ship on its waters. That prayer had been granted, and his and many another English ship had crossed the great Sea of the South. Meanwhile the realised dream of El Dorado had been replaced in men’s minds by another, even more vast, shadowy, and splendid. This was the dream of the Great Southern Continent, and in this imagination revelled and ran riot. Grave scientists, too, demonstrated beyond all doubt that there must be such a land far away to the south since how, without it as a counterpoise to the continents of the north, was the rolling world to be kept in equilibrium? So they took it for granted, laid it down upon the maps, and wrote glowing descriptions of the varieties of climate, the splendour of scenery, the wealth of treasures and the strange peoples and animals that it must of necessity contain. Above all, it would be a new El Dorado which would not be under the control of Spain. What more could men want, unless indeed it was the actual discovery of the Terra Incognita Australis? This was the new world of which Cook was to be the Columbus. Others had seen parts of it just as others had seen parts of America before the great Genoese reached the West Indies, but he was the man who was to do the work of putting its existence beyond all doubt. The Royal Society found that there would be a transit of Venus in the year 1769, and that it would be best observed from some point in the great Southern Ocean, say Amsterdam Island or the Marquesas Group, lately discovered by the Dutch and Portuguese, and as the result of representations made to the King, an expedition was set on foot to carry out suitable persons to observe it. Of this expedition James Cook, raised from the rank of master to that of lieutenant, was placed in command. On his own recommendation the ship chosen for the purpose was the _Endeavour_, a Whitby-built craft of 370 tons, broad of bow and stern and fairly light of draft, and built for strength and endurance rather than speed. She sailed, carrying a complement all told of eighty-five men, from Plymouth on August 26, 1768, which as Cook’s latest biographer happily remarks, was a Friday, and the starting-day of what was, all things considered, the most successful voyage of discovery ever made. Just before she sailed Captain Wallace had come back bringing the news of the discovery of Otaheite, otherwise known as Tahiti, and as this island was considered a more favourable position, Captain Cook, as we may now fairly call him, was ordered to proceed there first.