ore."

[Illustration: CAPTAIN COOK, THE DISCOVERER OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS,
WITH HIS SHIPS IN KEALAKEKUA BAY, HAWAII, WHERE HE WAS MURDERED. From
an engraving in the Atlas to _Cook's Voyages_, 1779.]

Such was the melancholy end of England's first great navigator--James
Cook--the foremost sailor of his time, the man who had circumnavigated
New Zealand, who had explored the coast of New South Wales, named
various unknown islands in the Pacific Ocean, and discovered the
Sandwich Islands. He died on 14th February 1779. It was not till 11th
January 1780 that the news of his death reached London, to be recorded
in the quaint language of the day by the _London Gazette_.

"It is with the utmost concern," runs the announcement, "that we inform
the Public, that the celebrated Circumnavigator, Captain Cook, was
killed by the inhabitants of a new-discover'd island in the South Seas.
The Captain and crew were first treated as deities, but, upon their
revisiting that Island, hostilities ensued and the above melancholy
scene was the Consequence. This account is come from Kamtchatka by
Letters from Captain Clerke and others. But the crews of the Ships
were in a very good state of health, and all in the most desirable
condition. His successful attempts to preserve the Healths of his
Crews are well known, and his Discoveries will be an everlasting Honour
to his Country."

_Cook's First Voyages_ were published in 1773, and were widely read,
but his account of the new country did not at once attract Europeans
to its shores. We hear of "barren sandy shores and wild rocky coast
inhabited by naked black people, malicious and cruel," on the one hand,
"and low shores all white with sand fringed with foaming surf," with
hostile natives on the other.

[Illustration: "THE UNROLLING OF THE CLOUDS"--VI. The world as known
after the voyages of Captain Cook (1768-1779).]

It was not till eighteen years after Cook's death that Banks--his old
friend--appealed to the British Government of the day to make some
use of these discoveries. At last the loss of the American colonies
in 1776 induced men to turn their eyes toward the new land in the South
Pacific. Banks remembered well his visit to Botany Bay with Captain
Cook in 1770, and he now urged the dispatch of convicts, hitherto
transported to America, to this newly found bay in New South Wales.

So in 1787 a fleet of eleven ships with one thousand people on board
left the shores of England under