hern continent, will probably, in all
future charts of the world, be distinguished as the largest islands that
exist in that part of the southern hemisphere.

5. Whether New Holland did or did not join to New Guinea, was a question
involved in much doubt and uncertainty, before Captain Cook's sailing
between them, through Endeavour Strait, decided it. We will not hesitate
to call this an important acquisition to geography. For though the great
sagacity and extensive reading of Mr Dalrymple had discovered some
traces of such a passage having been found before, yet these traces were
so obscure, and so little known in the present age, that they had not
generally regulated the construction of our charts; the President de
Brosses, who wrote in 1756, and was well versed in geographical
researches, had not been able to satisfy himself about them; and Mons.
de Bougainville, in 1768, who had ventured to fall in with the south
coast of New Guinea, near ninety leagues to the westward of its
south-east point, chose rather to work those ninety leagues directly to
windward, at a time when his people were in such distress for provisions
as to eat the seal-skins from off the yards and rigging, than to run
the risk of finding a passage, of the existence of which he entertained
the strongest doubts, by persevering in his westerly course. Captain
Cook, therefore, in this part of his voyage (though he modestly
disclaims all merit), has established, beyond future controversy, a fact
of essential service to navigation, by opening, if not a new, at least
an unfrequented and forgotten communication between the South Pacific
and Indian Oceans.[27]

[Footnote 27: We are indebted to Mr Dalrymple for the recovery of an
interesting document respecting a passage betwixt New Holland and New
Guinea, discovered by Torres, a Spanish navigator, in 1606. It was found
among the archives of Manilla, when that city was taken by the British,
in 1762, being a copy of a letter which Torres addressed to the king of
Spain, giving an account of his discoveries. The Spaniards, as usual,
had kept the matter a profound secret, so that the existence of the
strait was generally unknown, till the labours of Captain Cook, in 1770,
entitled him to the merit here assigned. Captain Flinders, it must be
remembered, is of opinion, that some suspicion of such a strait was
entertained in 1644, when Tasman sailed on his second voyage, but that
the Dutch, who were then engaged i