Let us, however, do justice to these beginnings of discovery. To the Dutch, we must, at least, ascribe the merit of being our harbingers, though we afterward went beyond them in the road they had first ventured to tread. And with what success his majesty's ships have, in their repeated voyages, penetrated into the obscurest recesses of the South Pacific Ocean, will appear from the following enumeration of their various and very extensive operations, which have drawn up the veil that had hitherto been thrown over the geography of so great a proportion of the globe.
1. The several lands, of which any account had been given, as seen by any of the preceding navigators, Spanish or Dutch, have been carefully looked for, and most of them (at least such of them as seemed of any consequence) found out and visited; and not visited in a cursory manner, but every means used to correct former mistakes, and to supply former deficiencies, by making accurate enquiries ashore, and taking skilful surveys of their coasts, by sailing round them, who has not heard, or read, of the boasted _Tierra Australia del Espiritu Santo_ of Quiros? But its bold pretensions to be a part of a southern continent, could not stand Captain Cook's examination, who sailed round it, and assigned it its true position and moderate bounds, in the Archipelago of the New Hebrides.[25]
[Footnote 25: Bougainville, in 1768, did no more than discover that the land here was not connected, but composed of islands. Captain Cook, in 1774, explored the whole group.--D.]
2. Besides perfecting many of the discoveries of their predecessors, our late navigators have enriched geographical knowledge with a long catalogue of their own. The Pacific Ocean, within the south tropic, repeatedly traversed, in every direction, was found to swarm with a seemingly endless profusion of habitable spots of land. Islands scattered through the amazing space of near fourscore degrees of longitude, separated at various distances, or grouped in numerous clusters, have, at their approach, as it were, started into existence; and such ample accounts have been brought home concerning them and their inhabitants, as may serve every useful purpose of enquiry; and, to use Captain Cook's words, who bore so considerable a share in those discoveries, _have left little more to be done in that part_.