and that he was desirous of preventing any further bloodshed, it is not improbable that his humanity, on this occasion, proved fatal to him. For it was remarked that whilst he faced the natives, none of them had offered him any violence; but that, having turned about to give his orders to the boats, he was stabbed in the back, and fell Iwith his face into the water. On seeing him fall the islanders set up a great shout, and his body was immediately dragged on shore and surrounded by the enemy, who, snatching the daggers out of each other's hands, showed a savage eagerness to have a share in his destruction. Thus fell our great and excellent commander! After a life of so much distinguished and successful enterprise, his death, as far as regards himself, cannot be reckoned premature, since he lived to finish the great work for which he seems to have been designed, and was rather removed from the enjoyment than cut off from the acquisition of glory. How sincerely his loss was felt and lamented by those who had so long found their general security in his skill and conduct, and every consolation under their hardships in his tenderness and humanity, it is neither necessary nor possible for me to describe; much less shall I attempt to paint the horror with which we were struck, and the universal dejection and dismay which followed so dreadful and unexpected a calamity.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE, CHARACTER, AND SERVICES OF CAPTAIN COOK.

CAPTAIN COOK was born near Whitby, in Yorkshire, in the year 1727, and at an early age was put apprentice to a shopkeeper in a neighbouring village. His natural in

clination not having been consulted on this occasion, he soon quitted the counter from disgust, and bound himself for nine years to the master of a vessel in the coal trade. At the breaking out of the war in 1755, he entered into the King's service on board the Eagle, at that time commanded by Captain Hamer, and afterwards by Sir Hugh Palliser, who soon discovered his merit, and introduced him on the quarter-deck. In the year 1758 we find him master of the Northumberland, the flag-ship of Lord Colville, who had then the command of the squadron stationed on the coast of America. It was here, as I have often heard him say, that, during a hard winter, he first read Euclid, and applied himself to the study of mathematics and astronomy, without any other assistance than what a few books and his own industry afforded him. At the same time that he thus found means to cultivate and improve his mind, and to supply the deficiencies of an early education, he was engaged in most of the busy and active scenes of the war in America. At the siege of Quebec, Sir Charles Saunders committed to his charge the execution of services of the first importance in the naval department. He piloted the boats to the attack of Montmorency, conducted the embarkation to the Heights of Abraham, examined the passage and laid buoys for the security of the large ships in proceeding up the river. The courage and address with which he acquitted himself in these services gained him the warm friendship of Sir Charles Saunders and Lord Colville, who continued to patronise him during the rest of their lives with the greatest zeal and affection. At the conclusion of the war, he was appointed, through the recommendation of Lord Colville and Sir Hugh Palliser, to survey the Gulf of St Lawrence and the coast of Newfoundland. In this employment he continued till the

year 1767, when he was fixed upon by Sir Edward Hawke to command an expedition to the South Seas, for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus, and prosecuting discoveries in that part of the globe.

From this period, as his services are too well known to require a recital in this sketch, so his reputation steadily advanced to a height too great to be effected by my panegyric. Indeed, he appears to have been most eminently and peculiarly qualified for this species of enterprise. The earliest habits of his life, the course of his services, and the habitual bent of his mind, all conspired to fit him for it, and gave him a degree of professional knowledge which can fall to the lot of but a very few. His body, constitutionally, was robust, inured to labour, and capable of undergoing the severest hardships. His stomach bore without difficulty the coarsest and most ungrateful food. Indeed, temperance in him was scarcely a virtue, such was the indifference with which he submitted to every kind of self-denial. The qualities of his mind were of the same hardy, vigorous kind with those of his body. His understanding was strong and perspicacious; his judgment, in whatever related to the services he was engaged in, quick and sure. His designs were bold and manly, and both in the conception and the mode of execution bore evident marks of a great original genius. His courage was cool and determined, and accompanied with an admirable presence of mind in the moment of danger. His manners were plain and unaffected. His temper might perhaps have been justly blamed as subject to hastiness and passion, were it not that its outbursts were habitually controlled and disarmed by a disposition the most benevolent and humane.

Such are the outlines of Captain Cook's character;

but its most distinguishing feature was that unremitting perseverance in the pursuit of his object, which was not only superior to the opposition of dangers and the pressure of hardships, but even exempt from the necessity of ordinary relaxation. During the long and tedious voyages in which he was engaged, his eagerness and activity were never in the least abated. No incidental temptation could detain him for a moment; even those intervals of recreation which sometimes unavoidably occurred, and were looked for by us with a longing which persons who have experienced the fatigues of service will readily excuse, were submitted to by him with a certain impatience, unless in them he could recognise some material furtherance towards the more effectual prosecution of his designs.

It is not necessary to enumerate here the instances in which those qualities were displayed during the great and important enterprises in which he was engaged. I shall content myself with stating the results of those services under the two principal heads to which they may be referred, those of geography and navigation, placing each in a separate and distinct point of view.

Perhaps no science ever received greater additions from the labours of a single man, than geography has done from those of Captain Cook. In his very first voyage to the South Seas he discovered the Society Islands, determined the insularity of New Zealand, discovered the Straits which separate the two islands, and which are called after his name, and made a complete survey of them both. He afterwards explored the eastern coast of New Holland, hitherto unknown, an extent of twenty-seven degrees of latitude, or upwards of 2000 miles.

In his second expedition he resolved the great problem of a southern continent, having traversed that hemisphere.

between the latitudes of 40° and 70° in such a manner as to leave no room to surmise even the possibility of its existence, unless near the Pole, and out of the reach of navigation.

During this voyage he discovered New Caledonia, the largest island in the Southern Pacific except New Zealand; the island of Georgia, and an unknown coast, which he named Sandwich Land, the Thule of the southern hemisphere; and having twice visited the tropical seas, he settled the situations of the old, and made several new discoveries.

But the last voyage is distinguished above all the rest for the extent and importance of its discoveries. Besides several smaller islands in the Southern Pacific, he discovered, to the north of the equinoctial line, the group called the Sandwich Islands, which, from their situation and productions, bid fairer for becoming an object of consequence in the system of European navigation than any other discovery in the South Seas. He afterwards explored what had hitherto remained unknown of the western coast of America, from the latitude of 43° to 70° north, embracing an extent of 3500 miles, ascertained the proximity of the two great continents of Asia and America, passed the straits between them, and surveyed the coast on each side to such a height of northern latitude as to demonstrate the impracticability of a passage, in that hemisphere, from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean, either by an eastern or a western course. In short, if we except the Sea of Amoor, and the Japanese Archipelago, which still remained imperfectly known to Europeans, he completed the hydrography of the habitable globe.

As a navigator his services were perhaps not less splen