After this again New Zealand was visited, and once more the two ships plunged into the icy solitudes of Antarctica, only to return again, baffled by the impenetrable ice-wall. From here the ships steered northwards for Easter Island and Crusoe’s Island. It is noteworthy that on the way Captain Cook, the great Medicine Man of the sailors, himself fell sick, and that, for want of anything better, “a dog was killed to make soup for him”--from which it will be seen that voyages of discovery were not exactly picnics in his time. From Juan Fernandez he steered for the Marquesas again, once more visited New Zealand, and once more his sea-worn crews revelled in the unrestrained delights of Tahiti. Then again to the south, this time not to rest until the whole circle of the Southern hemisphere had been made without the finding of any other southern continent than the unapproachable Antarctica, and so in due course and without mishap came the Sunday morning, July 30, 1775, when the _Resolution_ and the _Adventure_, having well vindicated their names, dropped their willing anchors into the waters of Spithead. More honours, though not of the nineteenth-century-boom order, were now most justly bestowed on the Circumnavigator. He was promoted to the rank of Post-Captain in the Navy, and made a Captain of Greenwich Hospital, a post which carried with it a home and honourable retirement for the rest of his life--of which he was the very last man in the world to avail himself. He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and presented with the gold medal for his treatment of scurvy. Captain Cook as sailor, as scientific navigator, and as explorer was now at the height of his fame. He was forty-eight years old, and had spent thirty-four years at sea, and it is no exaggeration to say that during this time he had added more geographical knowledge to the history of the world than any one had ever done before, and had probably covered a larger portion of its surface. He had at once proved and disproved the dream of the Southern Continent, and, potentially speaking, he had added enormous areas to the ever-growing realms of Greater Britain.