f this science,
will, on all suitable occasions, with proper and correct instruments,
be enabled to acquire a knowledge of their situation in the Atlantic,
Indian or Pacific Oceans, with a degree of accuracy sufficient to
steer on a meridianal or diagonal line, to any known spot, provided
it be sufficiently conspicuous to be visible at any distance from
five to ten leagues.

"This great improvement, by which the most remote parts of the
terrestrial globe are brought so sasily within our reach, would
nevertheless have been of comparatively little utility had not those
happy means been discovered for preserving the lives and health of the
officers and seamen engaged in such distant and perilous undertakings;
which were so peacefully practiced by Captain Cook, the first great
discoverer of this salutary system, in all his latter voyages around
the globe. But in none have the effect of his wise regulations,
regimen and discipline been more manifest than in the course of the
expedition of which the following pages are designed to treat. To an
unremitting attention, not only to food, cleanliness, ventilation,
and an early administration of antiseptic provisions and medicines,
but also to prevent as much as possible the chance of indisposition,
by prohibiting individuals from carelessly exposing themselves to the
influence of climate, or unhealthy indulgences in times of relaxation,
and by relieving them from fatigue and the inclemency of the weather
the moment the nature of their duty would permit them to retire, is
to be ascribed the preservation of the health and lives of sea-faring
people on long voyages."

"Those benefits did not long remain unnoticed by the commercial
part of the British nation. Remote and distant voyages being now no
longer objects of terror, enterprises were projected and carried into
execution, for the purpose of establishing new and lucrative branches
of commerce between Northwest America and China; and parts of the
coast of the former that had not been minutely examined by Captain
Cook became now the general resort of the persons thus engaged."

The special zeal and consistency with which Cook is defended by
the English navigators who knew him and were competent to judge of
the scope of his achievements is due in part to the venom of his
assailants. The historian of the Sandwich Islands, Sheldon Dibble,
says: "An impression of wonder and dread having been made, Captain Cook
and his men found lit