[Footnote 26: What the learned editor asserts here, as to the full knowledge acquired by the voyages to which he alludes, must be restricted, as Captain Flinders very properly remarks, to the general extent of the vast region explored. It will not apply to the particular formation of its coasts, for this plain reason, that the chart accompanying the work, of which he was writing the introduction, represents much of the south coast as totally unknown. It is necessary to mention also, that what he says immediately before, in allusion to the discoveries made by Captain Furaeaux, must submit to correction. That officer committed some errors, owing, it would appear, to the imperfection of preceding accounts; and he left undetermined the interesting question as to the existence of a connection betwixt Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales. The opinion which he gave as to this point, on very insufficient _data_ certainly, viz. that there is "no strait between them, but a very deep bay," has been most satisfactorily disproved, by the discovery of the extensive passage which bears the name of Flinders's friend, Mr Bass, the enterprising gentleman that accomplished it.--E.]
4. Tasman having entered the Pacific Ocean, after leaving Van Diemen's Land, had fallen in with a coast to which he gave the name of New Zealand. The extent of this coast, and its position in any direction but a part of its west side, which he sailed along in his course northward, being left absolutely unknown, it had been a favourite opinion amongst geographers, since his time, that New Zealand was a part of a southern continent, running north and south, from the 33° to the 64° of south latitude, and its northern, coast stretching cross the South Pacific to an immense distance, where its eastern boundary had been seen by Juan Fernandez, half a century before. Captain Cook's voyage in the Endeavour has totally destroyed this supposition. Though Tasman must still have the credit of having first seen New Zealand, to Captain Cook solely belongs that of having really explored it. He spent near six months upon its coasts in 1769 and 1770, circumnavigated it completely, and ascertained its extent and division into two islands. Repeated visits since that have perfected this important discovery, which, though now known to be no part of a southern continent, will probably, in all future charts of the world, be distinguished as the largest islands that exist in that part of the southern hemisphere.