^* This letter is the first intimation the Records contain of Banks's intention to abandon the expedition. The true facts of the case will probably never be known. The earliest published reference to the matter was contained in the preface of a small octavo volume of 328 pp., published, from information supplied by Marra, gunner's mate (See letter from Cook to Stephens, post, p. 119), by Newbury, of St. Paul's Churchyard, in 1775, i.e., two years before the official 4to. publication. From the preface the following extract is taken:—“How it came to pass that the four above-named gentlemen (Banks, Solander, Lind, and Zoffani), recommended by His Majesty as associates, were excluded, can only be conjectured from what is known. It put, indeed, a check to the rising expectations of the literati when the news was circulated that at the very moment when these learned and ingenious gentlemen were ready to embark, nay, when they had even taken leave of his Majesty for that purpose, and after the ship, provisioned for their reception, had sailed from the dock in which she was fitted up, a protest arrived at the Admiralty office, signed by the pilot, lieutenant, and master, by which she was declared utterly unfit for the voyage, equally incapable of bearing a high sea and answering her helm, and that the pilot could not even engage for her reaching Plymouth without over-setting. The mysterious tendency of this protest was rendered still more obscure by the assurance which his Majesty had received but a few days before that the ship was compleatly equipped, and perfectly adapted to the voyage for which she had been purchased. His Majesty, after this declaration, on reading the protest before mentioned, could not help expressing his astonishment, when to avert his indignation he was told that Mr. Banks was too unreasonable in his requisitions; and that to accommodate that gentleman and his attendants it had been found necessary to raise the upper works of the ship to such a height as to render her useless for any other purpose. Mr. Banks, on being made acquainted with this unfavourable report made to his Majesty, ordered his stores to be brought on shore, as did Dr. Solander, Dr. Lind, Mr. Zoffani, and five draftsmen that had been engaged by Mr. Banks for the purpose of delineating the curiosities of every kind that might be discovered in the course of the voyage—a voyage patronised by Parliament as well as by Royal Bounty, the Commons having voted £4,000 to Dr. Lind for his assistance in it; and to make it still more memorable, medals were ordered to be struck for it in brass, and Mr. Banks was at the expense of a few in gold and silver.” The able writer of the notice under the heading of Sir Joseph Banks in the Nouvelle Biographie Universelle, referring to the allegation that Banks did not go on the second voyage, because room could not be found by Captain Cook for his party, says:—“Was it jealousy or regret at having seen his glory outshone by men who had so effectively partaken of his labours? Was it the remembrance of some embarrassment which they had occasioned him during his first voyage?” Lord Brougham, in his Lives of Men of Letters and Science (vol. ii, p. 361), lays the whole blame at the door of Sir Hugh Palliser.