n that time had risen from
life in a mud hut to the rank of a commander in the Royal Navy? In
manner, he was plain and simple and direct, no flourish, no unnecessary
palaver of showy words, not a word he did not mean. In form, he was
six feet tall, in perfect proportion, with brown hair and eyes, alertly
penetrating, with features sharp rather from habit or thought than from
natural shape.

On this mission he left England in 1768, anchored at {181} the Society
Islands of the South Seas in the spring of 1769, explored New Zealand
in the fall of the same year, rounded Australia in 1770 and returned to
England in 1771, the very year Hearne was trying to tramp it overland
in search of a Northwest Passage. And he brought back no proof of that
vast southern world which geographers had put on their maps. Promptly
he was sent out on a second voyage to find or demolish that mythical
continent of the southern hemisphere; and he demolished the myth of a
southern continent altogether, returning from circumnavigating the
globe just at the time when the furor of a Northwest Passage northward
of Hudson Bay, northward even of Bering's course on the Pacific, was at
its height.

The third voyage was to determine finally the bounds of western
America, the possibilities of a passage between Europe and Asia by way
of the Pacific. Two ships--the _Resolution_, four hundred and sixty
tons, one hundred and twelve men, which Cook had used before, and the
_Discovery_, three hundred tons, eighty men--were purchased at Hull,
the old port of Cook's boyhood dreams. To secure the good will of the
crews, two months' wages were paid in advance. Captain Clerke
commanded the _Discovery_; and the two crews numbered men of whom the
world was to hear more in connection with the northwest coast of
America--a young midshipman, Vancouver, whose doings were yet to
checkmate Spain; a young American, corporal {182} of marines, Ledyard,
who was to have his brush with Russia; and other ambitious young seamen
destined to become famous traders on the west coast of America.

The two ships left England in midsummer of 1776, crossed the equator in
September when every man fresh to the episode was caught and ducked
overrails in equatorial waters, rounded Good Hope, touched at the
Society Islands of the first voyage, and by spring of 1778 had explored
and anchored at the Sandwich Islands. Once on the Pacific, Cook
mustered his crews and took them into his conf