1,
and Captains Smith and Moore, by a private society, in 1746, though
encouraged by an act of parliament passed in the preceding year, that
annexed a reward of twenty thousand pounds to the discovery of a
passage, returned from Hudson's Bay with reports of their proceedings,
that left the accomplishment of this favourite object at as great a
distance as ever.

When researches of this kind, no longer left to the solicitation of an
individual, or to the subscriptions of private adventurers, became
cherished by the royal attention, in the present reign, and warmly
promoted by the minister at the head of the naval department, it was
impossible, while so much was done toward exploring the remotest corners
of the southern hemisphere, that the northern passage should not be
attempted. Accordingly, while Captain Cook was prosecuting his voyage
toward the South Pole in 1773, Lord Mulgrave sailed with two ships, _to
determine how far navigation was practicable toward the North Pole_. And
though his lordship met with the same insuperable bar to his progress
which former navigators had experienced, the hopes of opening a
communication between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans by a northerly
course, were not abandoned; and a voyage for that purpose was ordered to
be undertaken.[32]

[Footnote 32: Dr Douglas refers to the introduction to Lord Mulgrave's
Journal for a history of former attempts to sail toward the North Pole;
and to Barrington's Miscellanies for several instances of ships reaching
very high north latitudes.--E.]

The operations proposed to be pursued were so new, so extensive, and so
various, that the skill and experience of Captain Cook, it was thought,
would be requisite to conduct them. Without being liable to any charge
of want of zeal for the public service, he might have passed the rest of
his days in the command to which he had been appointed in Greenwich
Hospital, there to enjoy the fame he had dearly earned in two
circumnavigations of the world. But he cheerfully relinquished this
honourable station at home; and, happy that the Earl of Sandwich had not
cast his eye upon any other commander, engaged in the conduct of the
expedition, the history of which is now given, an expedition that would
expose him to the toils and perils of a third circumnavigation, by a
track hitherto unattempted.[33] Every former navigator round the globe
had made his passage home to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope; the
arduous task w