CHAPTER XI - NEW ZEALAND TO AUSTRALIA (ENDEAVOUR RIVER)

Summary

Having now entirely circumnavigated New Zealand, and found it, not as generally supposed, part of a continent, but two islands, and having not the least reason to imagine that any country larger than itself lay in its neighbourhood, it was resolved to leave it and proceed upon further discoveries on our return to England, as we were determined to do as much as the state of the ship and provisions would allow. In consequence of this resolution a consultation was held and three schemes proposed. One, much the most eligible, was to return by Cape Horn, keeping all the way in the high latitudes, by which means we might with certainty determine whether or not a southern continent existed. This was unanimously agreed to be more than the condition of the ship would allow. Our provisions indeed might be equal to it; we had six months' at two-thirds allowance, but our sails and rigging, with which, the former especially, we were at first but ill provided, were rendered so bad by the blowing weather that we had met with off New Zealand that we were by no means in a condition to weather the hard gales which must be expected in a winter passage through high latitudes. The second was to steer to the southward of Van Diemen's Land and stand away directly for the Cape of Good Hope, but this was likewise immediately rejected.