5. Whether New Holland did or did not join to New Guinea, was a question involved in much doubt and uncertainty, before Captain Cook's sailing between them, through Endeavour Strait, decided it. We will not hesitate to call this an important acquisition to geography. For though the great sagacity and extensive reading of Mr Dalrymple had discovered some traces of such a passage having been found before, yet these traces were so obscure, and so little known in the present age, that they had not generally regulated the construction of our charts; the President de Brosses, who wrote in 1756, and was well versed in geographical researches, had not been able to satisfy himself about them; and Mons. de Bougainville, in 1768, who had ventured to fall in with the south coast of New Guinea, near ninety leagues to the westward of its south-east point, chose rather to work those ninety leagues directly to windward, at a time when his people were in such distress for provisions as to eat the seal-skins from off the yards and rigging, than to run the risk of finding a passage, of the existence of which he entertained the strongest doubts, by persevering in his westerly course. Captain Cook, therefore, in this part of his voyage (though he modestly disclaims all merit), has established, beyond future controversy, a fact of essential service to navigation, by opening, if not a new, at least an unfrequented and forgotten communication between the South Pacific and Indian Oceans.[27]
[Footnote 27: We are indebted to Mr Dalrymple for the recovery of an interesting document respecting a passage betwixt New Holland and New Guinea, discovered by Torres, a Spanish navigator, in 1606. It was found among the archives of Manilla, when that city was taken by the British, in 1762, being a copy of a letter which Torres addressed to the king of Spain, giving an account of his discoveries. The Spaniards, as usual, had kept the matter a profound secret, so that the existence of the strait was generally unknown, till the labours of Captain Cook, in 1770, entitled him to the merit here assigned. Captain Flinders, it must be remembered, is of opinion, that some suspicion of such a strait was entertained in 1644, when Tasman sailed on his second voyage, but that the Dutch, who were then engaged in making discoveries in these regions, were ignorant of its having been passed. Several navigators have sailed through Torres's Strait, as it has been justly enough named, since the time of Cook, and have improved our acquaintance with its geography. Of these may be mentioned Lieutenant (afterwards Rear-Admiral) Bligh, in 1789; Captain (afterwards Admiral) Edwards, in 1791; Bligh, a second time, accompanied by Lieutenant Portlock, in 1792; Messrs Bampton and Alt, in 1793; and Captain Flinders, in 1802-3. The labours of the last-mentioned gentleman in this quarter surpass, in utility and interest, those of his predecessors, and, if he had accomplished nothing else, would entitle his name to be ranked amongst the benefactors of geography. What mind is so insensible as not to regret, that after years of hardship and captivity, the very day which presented the public with the memorial of his services and sufferings, deprived him of the possibility of reaping their reward?--E.]