Cook duly arrived there, and on the 3rd of June 1769 the main object of the expedition was fulfilled by a successful observation.  But he then proceeded farther, and arrived soon at a land which he saw reason to identify with the Staaten Land of Tasman; but on coasting along this, Cook found that, so far from belonging to a great southern continent, it was composed of two islands, between which he sailed, giving his name to the strait separating them.  Leaving New Zealand on the 31st of March 1770, on the 20th of the next month he came across another land to the westward, hitherto unknown to mariners.  Entering an inlet, he explored the neighbourhood with the aid of Mr. Joseph Banks, the naturalist of the expedition.  He found so many plants new to him, that the bay was termed Botany Bay.

He then coasted northward, and nearly lost his ship upon the great reef running down the eastern coast; but by keeping within it he managed to reach the extreme end of the land in this direction, and proved that it was distinct from New Guinea.  In other words, he had reached the southern point of the strait named after Torres.  To this immense line of coast Cook gave the name of New South Wales, from some resemblance that he saw to the coast about Swansea.  By this first voyage Cook had proved that neither New Holland nor Staaten Land belonged to the great Antarctic continent, which remained the sole myth bequeathed by the ancients which had not yet been definitely removed from the maps.  In his second voyage, starting in 1772, he was directed to settle finally this problem.  He went at once to the Cape of Good Hope, and from there started out on a zigzag journey round the Southern Pole, poking the nose of his vessel in all directions as far south as he could reach, only pulling up when he touched ice.  In whatever direction he advanced he failed to find any trace of extensive land corresponding to the supposed Antarctic continent, which he thus definitely proved to be non-existent.  He spent the remainder of this voyage in rediscovering various sets of archipelagos which preceding Spanish, Dutch, and English navigators had touched, but had never accurately surveyed.  Later on Cook made a run across the Pacific from New Zealand to Cape Horn without discovering any extensive land, thus clinching the matter after three years’ careful inquiry.  It is worthy of remark that during that long time he lost but four out of 118 men, and only one of them by sickness.

Only one great problem to maritime geography still remained to be solved, that of the north-west passage, which, as we have seen, had so frequently been tried by English navigators, working from the east through Hudson’s Bay.  In 1776 Cook was deputed by George III. to attempt the solution of this problem by a new method.  He was directed to endeavour to find an opening on the north-west coast of America which would lead into Hudson’s Bay.  The old legend of Juan de Fuca’s great bay still misled geographers as to this coast.  Cook not alone settled this problem, but, by advancing through Behring Strait and examining both sides of it, determined that the two continents of Asia and America approached one another as near as thirty-six miles.  On his return voyage he landed at Owhyee (Hawaii), where he was slain in 1777, and his ships returned to England without adding anything further to geographical knowledge.