A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 [Format Kindle]

This is Captain Cook's journal of his expedition beginning in 1772 to discover if there is a continent at the south pole. I did lots of skimming because he just doesn't have much to say on an average day at sea- latitude and longitude, wind direction, ice islands (evidently the word "iceberg" hadn't been invented yet) and whether he saw any penguins, whales or birds. Things are much more interesting when he gets on land at New Zealand and many islands in the South Pacific, even Easter Island with its statues. He goes into detail about native peoples, flora and fauna, topography, the location of bays, etc. I liked how he was aware that he had to bring along certain foods to prevent scurvy, but some of his men wouldn't eat those foods until after they had gotten symptoms. Then Cook was surprised when the sheep and goats which they had on the ship for food also showed symptoms of scurvy. This book is Volume 1 and he doesn't discover Antarctica in it, so that must happen in Volume 2.

Addendum: Oops!! Greg, who wrote the comment, is right- Antarctica wasn't discovered until 1820. Edward Bransfield is credited with being the first to see the peninsula. I should have done a little research first.

The problem with this is that so many of the daily entries are just wind directions, sails set and distance traveled. There are sections that are intensely interesting, but you get to appreciate fully the monotony of sailing from interesting part to interesting part.

Men of Captain Cook's caliber are exceedingly rare nowadays. In comparison, the diversity and breadth of his academic education and general lay-knowledge is seldom found in the highest achieving academics or professionals of the present day. So often are people of today found lacking in one aspect of learning or life experience owing to all of the technologies and comforts that have proven to not only simplify and lengthen our lives, but at the same time limit our desires and/or ability to excel and expand our knowledge.
These two volumes are excellent reading despite the occasional Kindle transcriptional errors, (be they grammatical or spelling). Cook is thorough in his scientific detail of daily observations, (navigational, astronomical, meteorological, linguistical, phonetical, sociological, botanical, medical, anthropological, etc., etc.) One detail I found particularly interesting is that many of the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates referenced in these two volumes on specific dates, have been uploaded to Google Earth by some diligent user so that it is moderately easy to track his voyage over the course of three-plus years. I also appreciated the geographical discoveries that he made and the medical success he achieved in keeping his entire crew in the best of health.)
I further gained a moderate understanding of many obscure navigational and nautical terms, and phrases. It is also an enlightening read for anyone who enjoys reading older writings of the English language. Many Anglo figures of speech, that have been lost over time, frequently appear in this narrative. I'd love to peruse an original printing of this document some time because, being a digital version, it lacks all of the images which are referenced including numerous color plates of drawings made by one of his crew.