Traveller! contemplate, admire, revere, and emulate this great master in his profession; whose skill and labours have enlarged natural philosophy; have extended nautical science; and have disclosed the long-concealed and admirable arrangements of the Almighty in the formation of this globe, and, at the same time, the arrogance of mortals, in presuming to account, by their speculations, for the laws by which he was pleased to create it. It is now discovered, beyond all doubt, that the same Great Being who created the universe by his _fiat_, by the same ordained our earth to keep a just poise, without a corresponding Southern continent—and it does so! “He stretches out the North over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” JOB, xxvi. 7. If the arduous but exact researches of this extraordinary man have not discovered a new world, they have discovered seas unnavigated and unknown before. They have made us acquainted with islands, people, and productions, of which we had no conception. And if he has not been so fortunate as Americus to give his name to a continent, his pretensions to such a distinction remain unrivalled; and he will be revered, while there remains a page of his own modest account of his voyages, and as long as mariners and geographers shall be instructed, by his new map of the Southern hemisphere, to trace the various courses and discoveries he has made. If public services merit public acknowledgments; if the man who adorned and raised the fame of his country is deserving of honours, then Captain COOK deserves to have a monument raised to his memory, by a generous and grateful nation. _Virtutis uberrimum alimentum est honos._ VAL. MAXIMUS, lib. ii. cap. 6. A VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN. BOOK I. TRANSACTIONS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE VOYAGE TILL OUR DEPARTURE FROM NEW ZEALAND. CHAP. I. VARIOUS PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE.—OMAI’S BEHAVIOUR ON EMBARKING.— OBSERVATIONS FOR DETERMINING THE LONGITUDE OF SHEERNESS, AND THE NORTH FORELAND.—PASSAGE OF THE RESOLUTION FROM DEPTFORD TO PLYMOUTH.— EMPLOYMENTS THERE.—COMPLEMENTS OF THE CREWS OF BOTH SHIPS, AND NAMES OF THE OFFICERS.—OBSERVATIONS TO FIX THE LONGITUDE OF PLYMOUTH.— DEPARTURE OF THE RESOLUTION. Having, on the ninth day of February, 1776, received a commission to command his Majesty’s sloop the Resolution, I went on board the next day, hoisted the pendant, and began to enter men. At the same time, the Discovery, of three hundred tons’ burthen, was purchased into the service, and the command of her given to Captain Clerke, who had been my second Lieutenant on board the Resolution, in my second voyage round the world, from which we had lately returned.