March 7, 1778. Cook's Last Voyage Capt. Cook reached the north-west coast of America in about lat. 44J° N. In the summer of 1776, Cook, in the Resolution, accompanied by Charles Clerke in the Discovery, had sailed on a voyage of exploration for the British Admiralty to the northern region of the Pacific coast of America, with the view of discovering a route thither via the Arctic. A few new islands were discovered in the Pacific, including the atoll named Christmas Island, where an eclipse of the sun was observed on Dec. 30. On Jan. 18, Hawaii was discovered, and the group was named the Sandwich Islands, after the Earl of Sandwich, who had done so much to encourage Cook's explorations; the Spaniards had probably visited the group in the sixteenth century. The coast of America north of 40° N. was practically unknown before Cook's visit. His vessels anchored in Nootka Sound, and thence proceeded north, naming islets and inlets as they went. Cook's Bay was thoroughly explored, and conclusive proof was obtained that no passage through to Hudson's Bay existed. The coast of the Alaskan Peninsula was surveyed, and Cape Prince of Wales reached and named. Crossing the strait to the Asiatic side, Cook made acquaintance with the Chukchee, returned to the American side, and pushed north to Cape Lisburne. Ice on both coasts and in the open sea compelled the vessels to return. On the west coast of Hawaii, Cook was murdered by the natives. Capt. Clerke took charge and decided to continue Cook's work in the northern Pacific, but he died on Aug. 2, 1779, and was buried at Petropavlovsk (Kamchatka). The vessels then returned, reaching the Nore in 1780. Cook's previous voyages contributed so much to exploration that his remarkable achievement in these northern regions is sometimes overlooked.March 7, 1925.Eastern Bolivia Col. P. H. Fawcett, leading an expedition to explore eastern Bolivia, reported from Cuyaba, Brazil, that his party was fit and his instruments were in good condition. Fawcett stayed at Cuyaba until April 20, and thence started on his proposed exploration of the Xinga, Araguaya, and Tocantin regions. A dispatch, dated May 30, 1925, from a camp in lat. 11° 43' S., long. 54° 35' W., was the last that was heard of him and his son and a young Englishman, R. Rimell. G. M. Dyott left for Brazil in 1928 to search for the party, and succeeded in crossing fro'm Cuyaba to the Kulisehu River and thence reached the Xingu, following it to the Amazon. His journey was a remarkable feat of exploration, but it failed to find Fawcett and his party, and Dyott concluded that they had been murdered by Indians. Fawcett's previous work had included many explorations in Eastern Bolivia, and he had acted as chief commissioner on the Bolivia-Brazil boundary commission in 1906.March 9, 1914.Capt. Shakespear in the Arabian Peninsula Capt. Shakespear reached the Malham oasis, previously unvisited by Europeans. He left Koweit in February, determined to penetrate into the heart of the desert peninsula of Arabia and to cross it from the Persian Gulf to Egypt. He covered some 1200 miles of unknown country, and for the whole of his journey he kept up a continuous route traverse, checked by observations for latitude; he also took hypsometric readings for altitude. Thus for the first time a complete traverse of the lower Wadi er Bumma was achieved, the first reliable map of the Tuwaik settlements was made, and a new route from Buraida to Jauf followed. From 1909, when he was appointed political agent at Koweit, Shakespear had made annual excursions into the comparatively unknown hinterland, and these paved the way for his last journey. In 1915 he was killed in a skirmish between the forces of Ibn Saud and his rival Ibn Ras