CAPTAIN COOK AND HAWAII

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 261, 4 August 1928, Page 23

CAPTAIN COOK AND HAWAII

A heated controversy has been raging in Honolulu, apropos the Cook Sesquicent.ennial Exhibition, to be held this year to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Caplain Cook’s discovery of the Hawaiian Isles, as to whether or not the famous British circumnavigator of the globe really was the group’s discoverer. Several claims arc made that Spanish exploring ships visited thc isles during the 10th and 17th centuries. According to Bishop Restarick, an eminent expert on early Hawaiian history (whose views are quoted by a contributor to the Glasgow “Weekly lieraid”), “the question is not a mere matter of difference of personal opinion, but one that concerns the truth or falsehood of official declarations, and becomes Ums a matter of public importance. When the official guests arrive for tin Sosquicentenninl Exhibition they will see in the Bank of Hawaii and in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel large paintings in which there is a Spanish ship, bearing the caption that Gaetans discovered Hawaii in 1555. In a map recently published they will see a vessel with the snine statement below it. On the liner Citv of Honolulu there is a stained-glass window showing a ship, beneath which is the same slory; and, near by, another stained-glass window with an inscription stating Hint Captain Cook ‘visited’ the islands in 1778.” Nevertheless, he declares thnf he has found no basis for these assertions. The anti-Cook faction direct att'mtion to the Ortclius and I’laneius maps of 1570 and 1591, which show groups of isles clearly known to thc Spanish navigators of the day. very near the nctmil position of the Hawaiinns. and called Los Monges, La Degraciada, and La Veniza. Dr. Arthur Mouritz cites several maps—Dutch, Spanish. Flemish, and French —which satisfy him that the Los Monges group are in reality the Hawaiian ’Hie pro-Cooks energetically deny it. A Chinese member of the Territorial Assembly of the’isles, backed up by several other Chinese, derides the Spanish claims no less than the British, declaring that Chinese records show that, their traders sailed thither in junks for centuries previously. The last word, apparently, has been spoken by Hawan•lll*. who says that they themselves wore Ihe first people Io Piser.vr- the t-roon. -flor sailing thither from Polynesian ts-i-imls in the far south-west. Had they •mt nlremly discovered the group ami uotllcd there, they submit, who wimbl have been waiting there to trade wilh Ihe Chinese traders?