Later on Cook made a run across the Pacific from New Zealand to Cape Horn without discovering any extensive land, thus clinching the matter after three years' careful inquiry.

It is worthy of remark that during that long time he lost but four out of 118 men, and only one of them by sickness.
Only one great problem to maritime geography still remained to be solved, that of the north-west passage, which, as we have seen, had so frequently been tried by English navigators, working from the east through Hudson's Bay.

In 1776 Cook was deputed by George III.

to attempt the solution of this problem by a new method.

He was directed to endeavour to find an opening on the north-west coast of America which would lead into Hudson's Bay.