2. Besides perfecting many of the discoveries of their predecessors, our late navigators have enriched geographical knowledge with a long catalogue of their own. The Pacific Ocean, within the South tropic, repeatedly traversed, in every direction, was found to swarm with a seemingly endless profusion of habitable spots of land. Islands, scattered through the amazing space of near fourscore degrees of longitude, separated at various distances, or grouped in numerous clusters, have, at their approach, as it were, started into existence; and such ample accounts have been brought home concerning them and their inhabitants, as may serve every useful purpose of inquiry; and, to use Captain Cook’s words, who bore so considerable a share in those discoveries, _have left little more to be done in that part_.[13] 3. Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, had each of them contributed toward increasing our knowledge of the islands that exist in the Pacific Ocean, within the limits of the southern tropic; but how far that ocean reached to the west, what lands bounded it on that side, and the connection of those lands with the discoveries of former navigators, was still the reproach of geographers, and remained absolutely unknown, till Captain Cook, during his first voyage in 1770[14], brought back the most satisfactory decision of this important question. With a wonderful perseverance, and consummate skill, amidst an uncommon combination of perplexities and dangers, he traced this coast near two thousand miles from the 38° of South latitude, cross the tropic, to its northern extremity, within 10-1/2° of the equinoctial, where it was found to join the lands already explored by the Dutch, in several voyages from their Asiatic settlements, and to which they have given the name of New Holland. Those discoveries made in the last century, before Tasman’s voyage, had traced the north and the west coasts of this land; and Captain Cook, by his extensive operations on its east side, left little to be done toward completing the full circuit of it. Between Cape Hicks, in latitude 38°, where his examination of this coast began, and that part of Van Diemen’s Land, from whence Tasman took his departure, was not above fifty-five leagues. It was highly probable, therefore, that they were connected; though Captain Cook cautiously says, that _he could not determine whether_ his New South Wales, that is, the East Coast of New Holland, _joins to Van Diemen’s Land, or no_.[15] But what was thus left undetermined by the operations of his first voyage, was, in the course of his second, soon cleared up; Captain Furneaux, in the Adventure, during his separation from the Resolution (a fortunate separation as it thus turned out) in 1773, having explored Van Diemen’s Land, from its southern point, along the east coast, far beyond Tasman’s station, and on to the latitude 38°, where Captain Cook’s examination of it in 1770 had commenced.[16]