South Sea, and which was eventually committed to Captain Wallis.  This Alexander Dalrymple was afterwards the well-known Hydrographer to the Admiralty and the East India Company, to whom the progress of geographical knowledge lies under deep obligations.  He was one of the numerous younger brothers of Lord Hailes, the Scotch judge and historian, and having returned in 1765 from thirteen years’ work in the East India Company’s service, had devoted himself since then to the study of discoveries in the South Sea, and arrived at a confident belief in the existence of a great undiscovered continent in that quarter.  Lord Shelburne would have given him the command of this expedition had not Captain Wallis been already engaged, and next year he was actually offered, and had he been granted naval rank, which he thought essential for maintaining discipline on board ship, he would have undertaken command of the more memorable expedition to observe the transit of Venus, which made Captain Cook the most famous explorer of his age.

The following is Smith’s letter:—­

MY LORD—­I send you enclosed Quiros’s memorial, presented to Philip the Second after his return from his voyage, translated from the Spanish in which it is published in Purchass.  The voyage itself is long, obscure, and difficult to be understood, except by those who are particularly acquainted with the geography and navigation of those countries, and upon looking over a great number of Dalrymple’s papers I imagined this was what you would like best to see.  He is besides just finishing a geographical account of all the discoveries that have yet been made in the South Seas from the west coast of America to Tasman’s discoveries.  If your lordship will give him leave, he would be glad to read this to you himself, and show you on his map the geographical ascertainment of the situation of each island.  I have seen it; it is extremely short; not much longer than this memorial of Quiros.  Whether this may be convenient for your lordship I know not; whether this continent exists or not may perhaps be uncertain; but supposing it does exist, I am very certain you never will find a man fitter for discovering it, or more determined to hazard everything in order to discover it.  The terms that he would ask are, first, the absolute command of the ship, with the naming of all the officers, in order that he may have people who both have confidence in him and in whom he has confidence; and secondly, that in case he should lose his ship by the common course of accidents before he gets into the South Sea, that the Government will undertake to give him another.  These are all the terms he would insist upon.  The ship properest for such an expedition, he says, would be an old fifty-gun ship without her guns.  He does not, however, insist upon this, as a sine qua non, but will go in any ship from an hundred to a thousand tons.  He wishes to have but one ship with a good many boats.  Most expeditions