attempt the navigation of those seas
at an unfavourable season of the year; and that there was nothing very
formidable met with there when they were traversed by Captain Cook.

To this distinguished navigator was reserved the honour of being the
first, who, from a series of the most satisfactory observations,
beginning at the west entrance of the Strait of Magalhaens, and carried
on with unwearied diligence, round Tierra del Fuego, through the Strait
of Le Maire, has constructed a chart of the southern extremity of
America, from which it will appear, how much former navigators must have
been at a loss to guide themselves; and what advantages will be now
enjoyed by those who shall hereafter sail round Cape Horn.

IV. As the voyages of discovery, undertaken by his majesty's command,
have facilitated the access of ships into the Pacific Ocean, they have
also greatly enlarged our knowledge of its contents.

Though the immense expanse usually distinguished by this appellation,
had been navigated by Europeans for near two centuries and a half, by
far the greater part of it, particularly to the south of the equator,
had remained, during all this time, unexplored.

The great aim of Magalhaens, and of the Spaniards in general, its first
navigators, being merely to arrive, by this passage, at the Moluccas,
and the other Asiatic spice islands, every intermediate part of the
ocean that did not lie contiguous to their western track, which was on
the north side of the equator, of course escaped due examination. And if
Mendana and Quiros, and some nameless conductors of voyages before them,
by deviating from this track, and steering westward from Callao, within
the southern tropic, were so fortunate as to meet with various islands
there, and so sanguine as to consider those islands as marks of the
existence of a neighbouring southern continent, in the exploring of
which they flattered themselves they should rival the fame of De Gama
and Columbus, these feeble efforts never led to any effectual disclosure
of the supposed hidden mine of a New World. On the contrary, their
voyages being conducted without a judicious plan, and their discoveries
being left imperfect without immediate settlement, or subsequent
examination, and scarcely recorded in any well-authenticated or accurate
narrations, had been almost forgot; or were so obscurely remembered, as
only to serve the purpose of producing perplexing debates about their
situation and e