Pickersgill, who had been on the Pacific, was to go out north of Hudson
Bay and work westward. To work eastward from the Pacific to the
Atlantic was chosen a man who had already proved there was no great
continental mass on the south, and that the world did not turn upside
down, and who was destined to prove there was no great open ocean on
the north, and still the world did not turn upside down. He was a man
whose whole life had been based and built upon Fact, not Theory. He
was a man who accepted Truth as God gave it to him, not as he had
theorized it _ought_ to be; a man who had climbed from a mud cottage to
the position of the greatest navigator in the world--had climbed on top
of facts mastered, not {176} of schoolgirl moonshine, or study-closet
theories. That man was Captain James Cook.
Cook's life presents all the contrasts of true greatness world over.
Like Peter the Great, of Russia, whose word had set in motion the
exploration of the northwest coast of America, Cook's character
consisted of elements that invariably lead to glory or ruin; often,
both.
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