, bad weather. Here I spent near four months beating about in high
latitudes. Once I got as high as seventy-one degrees, and farther it
was not possible to go for ice which lay as firm as land. Here we saw
ice mountains, whose summits were lost in clouds. I was now fully
satisfied that there was no Southern Continent. I nevertheless
resolved to spend some time longer in these seas, and with this
resolution I stood away to the north."

In this second voyage Cook proved that there was no great land to the
south of Terra Australis or South America, except the land of ice lying
about the South Pole.

But he did a greater piece of work than this. He fought, and fought
successfully, the great curse of scurvy, which had hitherto carried
off scores of sailors and prevented ships on voyages of discovery,
or indeed ships of war, from staying long on the high seas without
constantly landing for supplies of fresh food. It was no uncommon
occurrence for a sea captain to return after even a few months' cruise
with half his men suffering from scurvy. Captain Palliser on H.M.S.
_Eagle_ in 1756 landed in Plymouth Sound with one hundred and thirty
sick men out of four hundred, twenty-two having died in a month. Cook
had resolved to fight this dreaded scourge, and we have already seen
that during his three years' cruise of the _Endeavour_ he had only
to report five cases of scurvy, so close a watch did he keep on his
crews. In his second voyage he was even more particular, with the result
that in the course of three years he did not lose a single man from
scurvy. He enforced cold bathing, and encouraged it by example. The
allowance of salt beef and pork was cut down, and the habit of mixing
salt beef fat with the flour was strictly forbidden. Salt butter and
cheese were stopped, and raisins were substituted for salt suet; wild
celery was collected in Terra del Fuego and breakfast made from this
with ground wheat and portable soup. The cleanliness of the men was
insisted on. Cook never allowed any one to appear dirty before him.
He inspected the men once a week at least, and saw with his own eyes
that they changed their clothing; equal care was taken to keep the
ship clean and dry between decks, and she was constantly "cured with
fires" or "smoked with gunpowder mixed with vinegar."

For a paper on this subject read before the Royal Society in 1776,
James Cook was awarded a gold medal (now in the British Museum).

But although the ex