He quitted the university in the year 1763. In 1766 he gave a proof of his zeal for knowledge by engaging in a voyage to Newfoundland. He was induced to choose that most unattractive region, by having the opportunity of accompanying a friend, Lieutenant Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, well known as a navigator of the Polar Seas, who was sent out in a ship of war to protect the fisheries. Soon after his return a much more interesting and important field of inquiry was opened to him by the progress of discovery in the southern hemisphere. In 1764 Commodore Byron, in 1766 Captains Wallis and Carteret were sent into the South Sea, to investigate the geography of that immense and then unfrequented region. These expeditions were succeeded in 1768 by another under the command of Captain Cook, who first obtained celebrity as a navigator upon this occasion. Lord Sandwich, then First Lord of the Admiralty, possessed an estate in Lincolnshire on the borders of Whittlesea Mere. Mr. Banks’s chief property lay in the same neighbourhood: and it so chanced that similarity of tastes, and especially a common predilection for all aquatic amusements, had produced a great intimacy between the statesman and his young country neighbour. To this fortunate circumstance it may probably be ascribed, that on Mr. Banks expressing a wish to accompany the projected expedition, his desire was immediately granted. His preparations were made on the most liberal scale. He laid in an ample store of such articles as would be useful or acceptable to the savage tribes whom he was about to visit: and besides the usual philosophical apparatus of a voyage of discovery, he engaged two draughtsmen to make accurate representations of such objects as could not be preserved, or conveyed to England; and he secured the services of Dr. Solander, a Swedish naturalist, a pupil of Linnæus, who had previously been placed on the establishment of the British Museum. The history of this voyage belongs to the life of Cook. The expedition bent its course for the Southern Ocean, through the Straits of Le Maire, at the southern end of America. Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander landed on the desolate island of Terra del Fuego, where the severity of the cold had very nearly proved fatal to several of their party. Dr. Solander in particular was so entirely overcome by the drowsiness consequent on extreme cold and exhaustion, that it was with great difficulty, and by the unwearied exertion and resolution of his more robust companion, that he was prevented from falling into that sleep which is the forerunner of death. Their farther course lay through the islands of the Pacific Ocean to Otaheite, which had been selected as a fitting place for the main object of the voyage, the observing of the passage of Venus over the sun’s disk. At that island their stay was consequently prolonged for several months, during which the Europeans and the natives mingled together, generally on the most friendly terms.