CAPTAIN COOK RELICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21164, 22 April 1932, Page 6

CAPTAIN COOK RELICS.

THEFT FROM A MUSEUM. ARTICLES VALUED AT £250,000. GERMAN UNIVERSITY'S LOSS. One of Captain Cook's most valuable trophies, sent home from Hawaii soma years after his death at the hands of Polynesian natives in 1779, was stolen recently from the Ethnological Department of the University at Gottingen, in Germany. This is a royal mantle fashioned entirely of feathers, with a feathered helmet to he "worn with it on special State occasions. There is not another mantle of its kind in the world, and the actual cash value set upon the articles is £250,000. To ethnologists their value cannot be esti. mated. The beautiful cloak is composed of thousands of tiny yellow and red feathers of a bird which is now extinct. These are interwoven upon a background of silken straw, so fine as to be a miracle of workmanship. Years before Captain Cook's arrival in Hawaii the people whose monarch bad worn these garments for special occasions had died out. Before Cook's prop, erty arrived in London Professor Blumenbach, of Gottingen, heard of the wonder of this particular piece of work from the South Sea Islands, and managed to acquire it for the University Museum. The general public had been allowed to see the articles only during the past few months. The thieves apparently obtained it with ease by smearing a window-pane of the ground floor of the Ethnological Department of the university building with soft soap. They then broke the pane noiselessly, climbed in, removed several locked doors from their hinges, and so reached the room where the feathered garments were contained in a glass case. They broke this noiselessly and vanished by the way in which they came, obviously escaping by motor-car. The theft appears to have been the work of people who knew their way about the university. Tbe German police have notified their colleagues all over Europe, and special guards have

been set to watch the frontiers, as it is believed that the thieves will try to dispose of their booty abroad, if they hava not already acted in the interests of an unscrupulous foreign collector.