EXPLOEATION BY SEA. 177 it. But if it is difficult to understand how a professional 177S explorer could so easily satisfy liiinself on such a point, it is not less surprising to find the geographers of the day readily accepting such a statement as a satisfactory settlement of the question. How little attention was devoted to the mat- ter may be seen from another singular assertion in the intro- duction to Cook^s Third Voyage, published in 1784 : — It is no longer a doubt that we have now a f uU knowledge of Geographers the whole circumference of this vast body of land, this fifth part of the world Of the whole circumference in question, one portion only could be said to have been at all known — ^the strip of coast- line explored by Cook. So far as the rest of it was con- cerned, the knowledge possessed in his day was confined to the very meagre information obtained from Dampier and the Dutch navigators who had touched at different points of the coast — ^north, north-west, and south. But they did not pretend to give the world anything like a full knowledge of the country they had visited. Even Dampier^s narrative, pre^ Dampier, cise as it is when compared with the accounts left by the Dutchmen, is more like the composition of a traveller seeking to gratify the curiosity of his readers with strange tales, than the journal of an explorer devoted to geographical discovery. He seems to be largely responsible for the indifference with Result of his which the exploration of New Holland was regarded in ^ ^ ^"• Europe, even do^vn to the days of Captain Cook. The picture he had drawn of the country was discouraging in the extreme; and yet his examination of the north-west coast was but a superficial one at best, extending over a very limited time and confined within a narrow range of observation. The prevalence of an unfavourable opinion Exploration of New with respect to the character of the country will probably Holland account for the neglect of its exploration. If it had been regarded as a matter of any importance, instructions would have been given to Captain Cook, or to some of his con- temporaries, to explore those portions of the coast-line M Digitized by Google
