REVIEW.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 97, 2 May 1870, Page 2

REVIEW.

Chapman's Centenary Memorial of Cap-

tain Cook's Description or New Zealand One Hundred Years Ago. Geo. T.

Chapman, publisher, Queen-street, Auckland, 1870. The days of the romance of discovery have well nigh come to a close. A few spots of the earth's surface, New Guinea and Central Africa have yet to unlock their • secrets, but the great Southern Continent that was to counterpoise the land in the northern Hemisphere, the dream of the grand old navigators of last century, with its fabled wealth surpassing that of the Indies, has passed from the ocean, and steamers are now flying in the teeth of wind and tide, by night and day where the " Dolphins," the " Adventures," and the " Endeavours" crept slowly among coral reefs in search of El Dorado. We cannot help envying our forefathers their dreams of romance, and feeling that the Bpirit of enterprise which fitted out expeditions to search for unknown lands and add them to the empire of England, showed a healthier national sentiment than the policy of indifference that tends to disregard the tairest portions of earth's surface, and to shut up the sympathies of a nation that was made to rule, within its own narrow instilar confines. It is impossible to read the simple tale of Captain Cook's discoveries without being carried away by the old spirit of .adventure. Other voyagers had traversed these seas and viewed coast-lines and mountain tops from the far distance, but to James Cook the Columbus of the Pacific belongs the glory of accurately defining positions, making known the people and the products of the country, and changing the shadowy line that marked the " Terra nondum cognita" of the old charts into a portion the British Empire.

A hundred year 3 have now passed away since Nicholas Young, or " Young Nick," as he was called by his shipmates, from the masthead of the Endeavour, saw the mountain tops that rise over Poverty Bay ; and on the evening of Sunday, the Bth of October, 1769, on the east side of the river flowing into Poverty Bay, the feet of Europeans first rested on the coast of New. Zealand, and British colonisation was baptized in blood. Many a thrilling scene has since attended the onward march of civilisation in New Zealand, not the least being associated with the same district of Poverty Bay ; and in the first interviews with the natives the mutual distrusts and confidences, the armed friendships, treacheries and terrible reprisals, we find the shadowing forth of the events of succeeding years. Captain Cook differs from most travellers, not only in the unprecedented accuiacy of his calculations, but in his singularly graphic style. Engaged in procuring data for the most important astronomical questions, working out his problems founded on his observations of the transit of Venus and of Mercury, and correcting the miscalculations of astronomers, in the little .cabin of the Endeavour, his narrative of the voyage, reads like a romance. No professional discussion, nor technical jargon blurs his pages; and having taken up his story it is all but impossible to lay the work aside without reading it through. To us who are resident near the scenes of those adventures of a bygone age, who can look out on the waters where the Endeavour, first of English ships, lay one hundred years ago, it is of singular interest to know the impressions produced in the mind of the great circumnavigator by our mountains and fertile plains, our rivers, and, above all, our unrivalled harbours, viewed by his professional eye. As we see on our maps the designations of headlands, bays, islands, their apparently arbitrary names are invested with a lasting interest when associated-with the life of the ship's company of the Endeavour. . The first description of the Bay of Plenty, Mercury Bay, Cape Colville, Waiheki, and the other islands of our harbour; the sailing up. Hauraki gulf, and the vessel swinging to her anchor off Tararu; the boating expedition away past the site of Grahamstown and up the Thames; the meeting with the subjects of the good old Toiava, who had come* across the mountains from the other coast —all this comes . up....t0 .us through the dim vista r of a. hundred _j ears as in a romance. The time has been well chosen by the enterprising publisher for bringing the story,of the discovery and the planting of the British Standard in New Zealand before the minds of the colonists ;, and his beautiful centenary edition," so profusely illustrated with lithographs and notes connecting the present with the far past, not only reflects the highest credit as a colonial production, but should be recognised as a. public service. No more fitting tribute than the publication of his own'story could be paid " To t c memory of England's greatest navigator, . Captain James Cook." " The eyes of the civilised world we're upon him, ond honour, integrity, all that is excellent or/dear to man in his progress to honest, fame, incessantly urged him on in his scientific course.";,' Nx>-sculptured marble, or brazen tablet marks the spot where Captain Cook fUafc *9§t Jijgi^op/jpn,New..Zealand at Poverty Bay; but*in his own' simple :'narrative-—----imperishable as the language in which it is written —he has left his " monumentum acre pcrennius."