days, as is shown in the preceding
map of those parts of the world, as given by the great French
cartographer D'Anville in 1745 (p. 157).

These discoveries of the Spanish and Dutch were direct results
and corollaries of the great search for the Spice Islands, which
has formed the main subject of our inquiries. The discoveries were
mostly made by ships fitted out in the Malay archipelago, if not
from the Spice Islands themselves. But at the beginning of the
eighteenth century new motives came into play in the search for
new lands; by that time almost the whole coast-line of the world
was roughly known. The Portuguese had coasted Africa, the Spanish
South America, the English most of the east of North America, while
Central America was known through the Spaniards. Many of the islands
of the Pacific Ocean had been touched upon, though not accurately
surveyed, and there remained only the north-west coast of America
and the north-east coast of Asia to be explored, while the great
remaining problem of geography was to discover if the great southern
continent assumed by Ptolemy existed, and, if so, what were its
dimensions. It happened that all these problems of coastline geography,
if we may so call it, were destined to be solved by one man, an
Englishman named JAMES COOK, who, with Prince Henry, Magellan, and
Tasman, may be said to have determined the limits of the habitable
land.

His voyages were made in the interests, not of trade or conquest,
but of scientific curiosity; and they were, appropriately enough,
begun in the interests of quite a different science than that of
geography. The English astronomer Halley had left as a sort of legacy
the task of examining the transit of Venus, which he predicted for
the year 1769, pointing out its paramount importance for determining
the distance of the sun from the earth. This transit could only
be observed in the southern hemisphere, and it was in order to
observe it that Cook made his first voyage of exploration.

There was a double suitability in the motive of Cook's first voyage.
The work of his life could only have been carried out owing to the
improvement in nautical instruments which had been made during
the early part of the eighteenth century. Hadley had invented the
sextant, by which the sun's elevation could be taken with much
more ease and accuracy than with the old cross-staff, the very
rough gnomon which the earlier navigators had to use. Still more
important