stretch of coast-line anywhere.

So far the voyage had been without other disaster than this, but on the
way back the _Endeavour_ put into Batavia to refresh, and in a letter to
the Secretary of the Admiralty, dated the 9th of May, 1771, Cook wrote:--

"That uninterrupted state of health we have all along enjoyed was,
soon after our arrival at Batavia, succeeded by a general
sickness, which delayed us there so much that it was the 20th of
December before we were able to leave that place. We were
fortunate enough to loose but few men at Batavia, but on our
passage from thence to the Cape of Good Hope we had twenty-four
men died, all, or most of them, of the bloody flux. This fatal
disorder reign'd in the ship with such obstinacy that medicines,
however skilfully administered, had not the least effect. I
arrived at the Cape on the 14th of March, and quitted it again on
the 14th of April, and on the 1st of May arrived at St. Helena,
where I joined His Maj.'s ship _Portland_, which I found ready to
sail with the convoy";

and on the 12th of July he brought up in the Downs, reporting one more
death--that of Lieutenant Hicks.

For his services Cook was promoted a step. His after-life and death need
no mention here, and although in both his second and third voyages he
touched at New Zealand and Tasmania, his connection with Australia
practically ends with the _Endeavour_ voyage. But a word or two about the
_Endeavour's_ officers, taken from documents recently obtained by the New
South Wales Government, which perhaps contain some things new to many
readers.

In the Record Office, London, there are no fewer than ten logs of Cook's
voyage; three of these are anonymous, but six of them are signed by the
ship's officers, and one, from circumstantial evidence, is no doubt by
Green, the astronomer. The signed logs are by Hicks, Cook's first
lieutenant; Forwood, the gunner; and Pickersgill, Clerke, Wilkinson, and
Bootie, mates. Hicks, as we have seen, died on the passage home; Forwood,
after the _Endeavour's_ return, is not heard of again. Pickersgill was
promoted to be master on the death of that officer (Robert Molineux) in
April, 1771. He had previously served as a midshipman under Wallis in
1766-1788, and he served again under Cook in the _Resolution_ as third
lieutenant. On the return of Cook from his second voyage, Pickersgill was
appointed commander of the _Lion_, and se