Note 54 — INTRODUCTION TO THE VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

See Coxe’s Russian Discoveries, pp. 26, 27, &c. The fictions of speculative geographers in the Southern hemisphere, have been continents; in the northern hemisphere, they have been seas. It may be observed, therefore, that if Captain Cook in his first voyages annihilated imaginary southern lands, he has made amends for the havock in his third voyage, by annihilating imaginary northern seas, and filling up the vast space, which had been allotted to them, with the solid continents of his new discoveries of American land farther west and north than had hitherto been traced.