AUSTRALIA UNVEILED

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 73, 23 September 1922, Page 17

AUSTRALIA UNVEILED

'The Discovery of Australia." By O. Arnold Woodff London : MacmiSan aod Company.

Professor Wood delivered the lectures which make up this book to a class at the Sydney University in 1917, and he dedicates his work to the history students, "and especially to one of them." It also contains lectures given before the Royal Australian Historical Society.^ The subject may not appear, at first glance, attractive to the general reader, but, on reading the book itself, it will be found that even his elusive interest will be captured and held. To the student of history or geography it will be foundi invaluable, for it ga.th«Tß up information on the subject for which Professor Wood has gone to innumerable authorities, some of them not generally accessible. The names of the authorities are all given. In Chapter 1., for instance, there are quoted no less than seven such authorities. The amount of material that Professor Wood had to handle before making his selections must have been stupendous; but for all his industry and keenness in research, he had the mortification to learn, when his work had been completed and printed!, that there waa in existence ii> England the autograph $ Cook's "Journal," also the "Instructions*' and "Secret Instructions." Not knowing this, Piofessor Wood referred to them as being no longer extant. However, it is considered to be unlikely, had he bean able to consult them, that they would have materially affected his work. THE DISCOVERERS. Captain Cook is often erroneously referred to as "the discoverer of Australia," which he certainly waa not. Its discovery is shown to be due to Tasman J in 1644 more than to anyone else, although Torres passed between New Guinea and Cape York in 1606. Tasman sailed from Batavia in 1664, made Sharks Bay, Western Australia, sailed north-east round into the Gulf of. Carpentaria, and returned via Banda. Two years before that he had-discovered New Zealand. But it wae reserved for Cook to discover the eastern side of the Great Island Continent in 1770, and to completely circumnavigate New Zealand. It is difficult to understand why Australia should have been for so long obscure to explorers from the west. That its existence, or rather that of a great continent in the antipodes; was suspected in Europe there seems to be good reason to believe. A certain Jave la* Grande waa known, but it is pretty certain that it, w»s not, as has been long believed, identical with Australia, but really the Island of Java itself. Confusion has arisen over Marco Polo's description, not that he waa to be held responsible, however, for the mistakes made by others and the large amount of guesswork that ancient cartographers did on information derived from his travels. THE SOLOMONS. Professor Wood graphically describes the voyages of Mendana and Quiros to the east and their sojourning at the Solomon Islands, but they did not discover, Australia, although so near. Professor Wood remarks : "It may, I believe, be affirmed," he says, "that we have no news of any voyage in the sixteenth century at all likely to have led to knowledge of any part of the Australian coast. This feet seems to me good reason for entertaining a strong sceptical prejudice in respect to arguments that seek to prove thatHhe Australian coast was well known." Thoroughly and carefully has Professor Wood accomplished his great task. Ha writes in an easy manner, and his lectures must have been a great privilege to hear personally delivered. It is only reasonable to suppose that he should devote much of his attention to Cook— and the explorer, by -the way, with which New Zealand is so doßely idenTfied still lacki a statue or other memorial of the Kind in this the capital city of the l&nd he explored so thoroughly. JAMES COOK, Professor Wood shows Cook as the man as well as the navigator, and thus describes the character:— " The sense of Cook's greatness grows in the student's mind. He does not storm our admiration, as, for example, does Drake or Wolfe. There is a certain quietness and reticence in his life, as" in his conversation, and as in his writngs. He was, we are told, a good talker, yet none of his talk has lived. He wrote accounts of his own voyages in admirable English; but his pbject was to get the story told, and as we read we think rather of the story than of the man. In no one moment does Cook shine forth the evident hero. His character in some ways reminds one of that of his greatest contemporary, George Washington—he who won a great war without winning "a battle. His greatness appears, as we think, not of one moment, but of the whole life.^Heroism was so wrought into the texture of character that he tells a heroic story in a way that makes one imagine it a matter-of-course affair. We think that the story lacks interest, when the fact is that it lacks ego'iem. Cook solves the riddle of the Pacific, and he tells you that he has done his duty and made ' a complete voyage.' We have to find for ourselves that none but Cook could have done this duty, or could have completed this voyage; that the reason of victory was greatness of mind, of will, and of spirit." Insight is shown, too, in the description of the characters of .Flinders, Bass (who discovered in a whaleboat cruise the Straits named after him, and proving Van Dieman's Land to be an island), La Perouse, Baudin, and D'Enfcrecasteaux. The history of Nei? Zealand is largely associated with the discovery of Australia, therefore Professor Wood's splendid work has a strong claim to the respectful attention and study of readers in New Zealand who are interested in the history of the country of their birth or adoption.