ship. The result was complete immunity from more than symptoms of scurvy.
He was able to say, when he returned, that no man had died not only of
this disease, but of any other, due to the exposures of the voyage. Three
lost by accidents, and one from a complaint contracted before leaving
England, were the sole losses on a voyage lasting three years, and during
which the exposure to heat, cold, rain, and all the hardships of a sea
life was probably never surpassed.

Leaving the Cape on November 22nd, Cook stood at once to the southward,
intending to pass over a spot in latitude 54 degrees South, where in 1739
M. Bouvet sighted land that was generally supposed to be a part of the
Southern Continent, and which he had been especially directed to examine.
Gales, however, drove him from his course, and to this day Bouvet's
Islands (for Cook proved they could be nothing else) are doubtfully shown
upon charts.* (* They were again reported in 1825 by the Sprightly, an
English whaler, but Sir James Ross searched for them in 1840 without
success.) Cook soon got into the ice, and fought with it and gales of
wind, in snow and sleet and fog, working gradually eastwards from the
longitude of the Cape for four months. The ship penetrated to 67 degrees
South at one point, and kept as high a latitude as ice permitted
everywhere, but without discovering any land. Cook found to his great joy
that the ice yielded good fresh water, and replenished his water casks in
this manner, without any fear of falling short. With all his power of
communicating his enthusiasm to others, it may be doubted if they shared
his pleasure at finding that the search in these inclement regions need
not be curtailed from lack of this necessary.

At last, in the longitude of Tasmania, Cook hauled to the northward, and
headed for New Zealand, where, after sailing over eleven thousand miles
since leaving the Cape without once sighting land, he anchored in Dusky