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[Page 225]

221.

Having now intirely circumnavigated New Zealand; & found it, not as generaly has been supposd part of a continent; but 2 Islands: & having not the least reason to imagine that any countrey larger than itself lays in its neighbourhood  it was resolvd to Leave it & Proceed upon farther discoveries in our return to England being  resolvd determnd to do as much as the state of the Ship & provisions would allow  in consequence of this resolution a consultation was held & 3 schemes proposd  One, much the most Elegible  to return by Cape Horn keeping all the way in the high Latitudes by which means we might with certainty determine whether or not a Southern Continent existed  but this was unanimously agreed to be more than the Condition of the ship would allow  our provisions indeed might be equal to it  we had six months at 2/3 allowance  but our Sails & rigging  with which the former especialy we were at first but ill provided were renderd so bad by the blowing weather that we had met with off New Zealand that we were by no means in a Condition to weather the hard Gales that must be expected in a winter passage through high latitudes, the Second was to steer to the Southward of Van Diemens Land & stand away  immediately directly for the Cape of Good Hope but this was likewise immediately rejected: if we were

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