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Excerpt from Historical Records of New Zealand South Prior to 1840 The prepossession in favour of a Sou-them Continent was inveterate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When Tasman made the west coast of New Zealand, he was confident that at last he had discovered the west side of the long-sought Terra Australis Incognita. So late as 1771 Alexander Dalrymple, Hydrographer to the Admiralty, and the jealous rival of Captain Cook, published a collection of voyages to the South Seas with the express object of demonstrating the existence of a huge Southern Continent. The only part of the Pacific then unexplored was that lying between New Zealand and Magellan Strait. This gave nearly the area by which, by elaborate calculations, Dalrymple showed was necessary to preserve the equilibrium of land between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. He therefore con cluded that this. Space south of the equator must be almost entirely solid land. Within four years of the 'publication of Dalrymple's works, Cook, in his second voyage, by sailing over the site of the imaginary continent, finally dissipated the fable, and reduced this Terra Australis Incognita to the frozen mass within the Antarctic circle - Notes re Abel Jansen Tasman in Hobart Museum Library. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The South Seas, as this region used to be called, conjured up images of adventure, belles and savages, romance and fabulous fortunes, but the long voyages of discovery and exploration of the vast Pacific Ocean were really an exercise in amazing logistics, navigation, hard grit, shipwreck and pure luck. The motivations were scientific and geographic, but at the same time nationalistic and materialistic. A series on global exploration and discovery would not be complete without this book by Quanchi and Robson. It is ambitious and informative and includes the familiar names of Laperouse, Bougainville, Cook and Dampier, as well as the intriguing stories of the Bounty Mutiny, scurvy, and the mysterious Northwest Passage, Terra Australis Ignotia and Davis Land. There are entries on first contacts, ships, navigational instruments, mapping, and botany. The scene is carefully set in the introduction, the chronology spans several centuries, and the extensive bibliography offers a guide to further reading. There are more than just dry facts in this book. It has a whiff of salt air, the clash of empires, cross-cultural beach encounters and personal adventure.