Series 03: Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 (vol. 2) - No. 0225
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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