credit of this ventilator is yet far from being eftablifhed
in the navy. What wonder then, if Captain Cook being
fo much otherwife taken up, fhould not have had time
to examine it, and therefore avoided the encumbering his
fhip with an apparatus, he had poflibly never feen ufed,
and of which he had at beft received but a doubtful character
f Nor was he altogether unprovided with a machine
for ventilation. He had the ■ wind-sails, though he hath not
mentioned them in his Paper, and he told me that he had
found them at times very ferviceable, and particularly between
the Tropics. They have the merit of taking up little
Toom, they require no labour in working, and the contrivance
is fo Ample that they can fail in no hands.' But their
powers are fmall.in comparifon with thofe of Hales’s ventilator;
they cannot be put up in hard gales of wind, and they
are of no efficacy in dead calms, when a refreffiment of the
air is moft wanted. Should there be any objection to the
having bdth?
Such were the meafures taken by our fagacious Navigator
for procuring a purity of air. It remains, only to fee in
what manner he fupplied pure water; another article of fo
-great moment, that the thirfty voyager, upon his fait and
putrid diet, with a ffiort allowance of that element, and that
in a corrupted ftate, muft account a plentiful provifion of
' frefh water to be indeed the beft of things.
Captain Cook was not without an apparatus for diftilling
fea-water, and though he could not obtain nearly fo much as
was expeCled from the invention, yet he fometimes availed
himfelf of i t ; but for the moft of his voyage he was other-
wife provided. Within the fouthern tropic, in the Pacific
Ocean,
Ocean, he found fo many iftands, and thofe fo well ftored with
fprings, that, as I have hinted before, he feldom was without
a fufficiency of water for every uleful purpofe Yet
not fatisfied with plenty, he would have the purell; and
therefore whenever an opportunity offered, he emptied what
he had taken in only a few days before, and filled his calks
anew. But was he not above four months in his paffage
from the Cape of Good Hope to New-Zealand, in the frozen
zone of the South, without once feeing land? and did he not
adually complete his courfes in the other high latitudes,
without the benefit of a Angle fountain i Here was indeed
a wonder of the deep ■!. I may call it the romance of his ■ voyage!
Thofe very fhoals, fields, and floating mountains of ice,
among which he fleered his perilous courfe, and which pre-
fented fuch terrifying profpeCts of deftruffion; thofe, I fay,
were the very means of his fupport, by fupplying him abundantly
with what he moft wanted. It had been faid that
thofe vaft maffes of ice, called ijlands or mountains, melted
into frefh water ; though Crantz, the relator o f that paradox,
did not imagine they originated from the fea, but that they
were firft formed in the great rivers of the North, and being
carried down into the ocean, were afterwards increafed to that
amazing height by the fnow that fell upon them *. But
that all frozen fea-water would thaw into frefh, had either
never been afferted, or had met with little credit. This is
certain, that Captain Cook expeCted no fuch tranfmutation,
and therefore was agreeably furprifed to find he had one
difficulty lefs to encounter, that of preferving the health of
his men fo long on fait and putrid provifions, with a fcanty
allowance of corrupted water, or what he could procure by
* Hift. of Greenland, b. I. ch, ii. § 11, 12.
V O L . I I . E e e diftillation.