d even gratify idle
curiosity, much less satisfy philosophical enquiry, or contribute
greatly to the safety, or to the success, of future navigation.

Let us, however, do justice to these beginnings of discovery. To the
Dutch, we must, at least, ascribe the merit of being our harbingers,
though we afterward went beyond them in the road they had first ventured
to tread. And with what success his majesty's ships have, in their
repeated voyages, penetrated into the obscurest recesses of the South
Pacific Ocean, will appear from the following enumeration of their
various and very extensive operations, which have drawn up the veil
that had hitherto been thrown over the geography of so great a
proportion of the globe.

1. The several lands, of which any account had been given, as seen by
any of the preceding navigators, Spanish or Dutch, have been carefully
looked for, and most of them (at least such of them as seemed of any
consequence) found out and visited; and not visited in a cursory manner,
but every means used to correct former mistakes, and to supply former
deficiencies, by making accurate enquiries ashore, and taking skilful
surveys of their coasts, by sailing round them, who has not heard, or
read, of the boasted _Tierra Australia del Espiritu Santo_ of Quiros?
But its bold pretensions to be a part of a southern continent, could not
stand Captain Cook's examination, who sailed round it, and assigned it
its true position and moderate bounds, in the Archipelago of the New
Hebrides.[25]

[Footnote 25: Bougainville, in 1768, did no more than discover that the
land here was not connected, but composed of islands. Captain Cook, in
1774, explored the whole group.--D.]

2. Besides perfecting many of the discoveries of their predecessors, our
late navigators have enriched geographical knowledge with a long
catalogue of their own. The Pacific Ocean, within the south tropic,
repeatedly traversed, in every direction, was found to swarm with a
seemingly endless profusion of habitable spots of land. Islands
scattered through the amazing space of near fourscore degrees of
longitude, separated at various distances, or grouped in numerous
clusters, have, at their approach, as it were, started into existence;
and such ample accounts have been brought home concerning them and their
inhabitants, as may serve every useful purpose of enquiry; and, to use
Captain Cook's words, who bore so considerable a share in those
discoveries, _h