Fascinating personal journals of the famed explorer, who among other exploits discovered and circumnavigated Antarctica, the Hawaiian Islands, eastern Australia and New Zealand. Cook proved that there was no other large land mass in the South Pacific Ocean, a popular myth of his day, and found that there was no navigable Northwest Passage. The son of a grocer, Cook also was responsible for devising a prevention for scurvy, a terribly debilitating scourge of sailors, and for accurately measuring latitude so that discoveries would not be lost to future navigators. Reading his dramatic adventures in his own words is incomparable, and the firsthand description of his death at the hand of native Hawaiians by eyewittnesses is unforgettable. Includes maps and illustrations.