The main object of the voyage was the settlement of the great question of
the southern Continent. Cook was directed to explore the whole region
about the South Pole, starting from the Cape of Good Hope, and working
eastward. The winter of the southern hemisphere was to be employed as
Cook thought fit.

This voyage brought Cook's qualities as a seaman and commander more
prominently to view even than the former. The conditions were very
different. Instead of mapping coasts and islands, the principal duty was
exploration of tempestuous seas in high latitudes, amongst ice, searching
in vain for the illusive southern land.

Cook carried it out thoroughly. No gales, no temperatures deterred him
from searching wherever the ships would safely sail, and it was only ice
in dense masses that turned him back.

What his people thought of it we do not know, but the Forsters have given
a piteous account of the privations and hardships of an exploration that
gave them little chance of exercising their special knowledge.

Cook was better provided with instruments for the determination of
longitude than before, and the ships carried four chronometric
timekeepers; but the proper method of making use of them was scarcely yet
realised, and the course of his voyage did not permit them to be of much
service.

Mindful of his former success in combating scurvy, and making use of his
experience, Cook carried with him all his former anti-scorbutics, and
redoubled his general precautions as to cleanliness, both of person and