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later. And the old Endeavour went back to her collier work in the North Sea.
Perhaps a letter written by Cook to a friend at Whitby on his return from the second voyage is sufficient to
serve our purpose here; for, though the voyage was important enough, yet little new was discovered. And after
spending many months in high latitudes, Cook decided that there was no great southern continent to the south
of New Holland and New Zealand.
"DEAR SIR,"--he writes from London in September 1775--"I now sit down to fulfil the promise I made you
to give you some account of my last voyage. I left the Cape of Good Hope on 22nd November 1772 and
proceeded to the south, till I met with a vast field of ice and much foggy weather and large islets or floating
mountains of ice without number. After some trouble and not a little danger, I got to the south of the field of
ice; and after beating about for some time for land, in a sea strewed with ice, I crossed the Antarctic circle and
the same evening (17th January 1773) found it unsafe, or rather impossible, to stand farther to the south for
ice.
"Seeing no signs of meeting with land in these high latitudes, I stood away to the northward, and, without
seeing any signs of land, I thought proper to steer for New Zealand, where I anchored in Dusky Bay on 26th
March and then sailed for Queen Charlotte's Sound. Again I put to sea and stood to the south, where I met
with nothing but ice and excessive cold, 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).
CHAPTER XLVI 156
But although the explorer was now forty-eight, he was as eager for active adventure as a youth of twenty. He
had settled the question of a southern continent. Now when the question of the North-West Passage came up
again, he offered his services to Lord Sandwich, first Lord of the Admiralty, and was at once accepted. It was
more than two hundred years since Frobisher had attempted to solve the mystery, which even Cook--the first
navigator of his day--with improved ships and better-fed men, did not succeed in solving. He now received his
secret instructions, and, choosing the old Resolution again, he set sail in company with Captain Clerke on
board the Discovery in the year 1776 for that voyage from which there was to be no return. He was to touch at
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