experience I had had of their neighbours formerly, I expected no great
matters from them.

With such views as these I set out at first from England; and would,
according to the method I proposed formerly, have gone westward through
the Magellanic Strait, or round Tierra del Fuego rather, that I might
have begun my discoveries upon the eastern and least known side of the
Terra Australis. But that way it was not possible for me to go by reason
of the time of year in which I came out; for I must have been compassing
the south of America in a very high latitude in the depth of the winter
there. I was therefore necessitated to go eastward by the Cape of Good
Hope; and when I should be past it it was requisite I should keep in a
pretty high latitude, to avoid the general tradewinds that would be
against me, and to have the benefit of the variable winds: by all which I
was in a manner unavoidably determined to fall in first with those parts
of New Holland I have hitherto been describing. For should it be asked
why at my first making that shore I did not coast it to the southward,
and that way try to get round to the east of New Holland and New Guinea;
I confess I was not for spending my time more than was necessary in the
higher latitudes; as knowing that the land there could not be so well
worth the discovering as the parts that lay nearer the Line and more
directly under the sun. Besides, at the time when I should come first on
New Holland, which was early in the spring, I must, had I stood
southward, have had for some time a great deal of winter weather,
increasing in severity, though not in time, and in a place altogether
unknown; which my men, who were heartless enough to the voyage at best,
would never have borne after so long a run as from Brazil hither.

For these reasons therefore I chose to coast along to the northward, and
so to the east, and so thought to come round by the south of Terra