12-21-1431 CONTENTS OF VOL. VI, OF CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE; UNDERTAKEN CHIEFLY WITH A VIEW OF OB SERVING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS OVER THE SUN'S DISK. W 7HEN merit burfts through the clouds of original indigence, when genius and abilities gain the palm of reward, the biographer becomes animated with his fubje&t, and feels the focial fympathies expand within his breaft. Diftinguished as this country is for its able navigators, it acquires no inconfiderable acceffion of fame from boafting the name of Cock, whofe three principal voyages we are now about to detail in an unbroken feries. This able and amiable man was born at Marton, in Cleveland, a village about four miles from Great Ayton, in Yorkshire, on the 27th of O&ober 1728. His father, who lived in the humble ftation of a farmer's fervant, married a woman in the fame fphere of life with himself; and both were noted in their neighbourhood for their honefly, VOL. VI. fobriety, B fobriety, and induftry, qualities which reflect a luftre on the loweft ranks. When our navigator was about two years old, his father and family removed to Great Ayton, and was appointed to fuperintend a confiderable farm belonging to the late Thomas Scottowe, efq. known by the name of Airyholm. As the father long continued in this trust, the fon, of courfe, followed the fame fervile employment, as far as his tender years would admit. His early education appears to have been der; but at the age of thirteen we find him put flenvery under the tuition of Mr. Pullen, who taught fchool at Ayton, where he learned the rudiments of arithmetic and book-keeping, and is faid to have shewn a remarkable facility in acquiring the fcience of numbers. About the beginning of 1745, when young Cook was seventeen years old, his father bound him apprentice to William Sanderson, for four years, to learn the grocery and haberdashery bufinefs, at Snaith, a populous fifhing town about ten miles from Whitby. But as he evinced a ftrong partiality for a maritime life, for which his predilection was probably strengthened by the fituation of the place, and the company with which, it is probable, he affociated, after a year and a half's fervitude, on fome trivial difagree, ment with his master, he obtained a release from his engagements, and determined to follow the bent of his inclination. While he continued at Snaith, according to Mr. Sanderson's account, he discovered a maturity of judgment, and a quickness in calculations be yond his years. |