A CAPTAIN COOK MEMORIAL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21148, 4 October 1930, Page 27

A CAPTAIN COOK MEMORIAL.

By C. M. R.

Attention was recently drawn to the existence of a little-known memorial erected to the memory of Captain Cook, that is to be found at Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire. New Zealanders are prone to consider Cook as their own particular possession, not fully realising that the greater part of his life’s work was done away • from our shores. This monument, a description of which appeared recently in the Otago Daily Times, was erected by ,■ Hugh Palliser. The inscription eulogises the famous navigator and brings home to us more clearly the high position he occupied in the estimation of Englishmen. It is unfortunate that New Zealand does not possess a fitting monument to Cook. Last year a citizen of Christchurch, realising the need for perpetuating the memory, of the real discoverer of our islands, donated £2OOO for this object, but we do not know whether any progress has yet been made. Captain Cook means much u U i£ n . anie and that of New Zealand should be inseparable companions. The inscription on the Buckinghamshire monument is of more than passing interest to us, so we give it in full. A few of the words have been obliterated by the hand of time:— To the Memory of CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, The Ablest and most Renowned Navigator this or any Country Hath Produced. He raised himself solely by hia merit from a very obscure birth to the rank of port captain in the Royal Navy, and was unfortunately killed by the savages of the island Owhyhee on February 14, 1779, which Island he had not long before discovered when prosecuting his third voyage round the globe. He possessed in an eminent degree all the qualifications requisite for his profession and great undertakings; together with the amiable and worthy of the. historian. Cool and deliberate in judging, sagacious in determining, active in executing . . . and persevering _in enterprise, from vigilance and unremitting caution unsubdued by labour. difficulties and disappointments; fertile in expedients, never wanting presence of mind, always possessing himself and the full use of a sound understanding; mdd, just, but exact in discipline, he was a father to his people, who were attached to him from affection and obedient from confidence.

He explored the southern hemisphere to a much higher latitude than had ever been reached and with fewer accidents than frequently befall those who navigate the coasts of this island. By his benevolent and unabating attention to the welfare of bis ship’s company, he discovered and introduced a system for the preservation of the health of seamen in long voyages, which has proved wonderfully efficacious, for in his second voyage round the world, which was continued upwards for three years, he lost only one man b.v distemper, of one hundred and eighteen of which his company consisted. The object of his last fission was to discover and ascertain the boundaries of Asia and America, and to penetrate into the Northern Ocean by the north-east cape of Asia.

Traveller! Contemplate, admire, revere, and emulate this-great master in his profession, whose skill and labours have enlarged natural philosophy, have extended nautical science and have disclosed the long-concealed and admirable arrangements of the Almighty in the formation of this globe, and at the same time the arrogance of mortals in presuming to account by their speculations for the laws by which He was pleased to create it. It is now discovered beyond all doubt that the same Great Being who created the universe by His fiat, by the same ordained our earth to keep a just poise without a southern continent, and it does so. “He stretcheth out the north over the empty places and hangeth the earth upon nothing.”—Job xxvi, 7. If the arduous, but exact, researches of this extraordinary man. have not discovered a new world, they have discovered seas unnavigated and unknown before. They have made us acquainted with islands, people, and productions of which we had no conception. And if he has not •been so fortunate as Americus to give his name to. a _ continent, bis pretensions tcsuch a. distinction remain and he will be revered while there remains a page of hia own . modest account of bis voyages and as long as mariners and geographers shall be instructed by his new map of the southern hemisphere to trace the various courses and discoveries be has made.

If public service merit .public .acknowledgment. if the man who adorned and raised the fame of his country is deserving of honours, then Captain Cook deserves to have a monument raised to his memory by a generous and grateful nation. This, makes a fitting epitaph for one of the greatest navigators of the world. With such instruments as were available at the time, the accuracy of hie surveys is indeed remarkable. Meticulous care with every observation he made and every entry in his log, tact, and perseverance, form the keynote of his character.