SYDNEY PARKINSON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2808, 8 January 1908, Page 82

SYDNEY PARKINSON.

By Jessie Mackat. 11.

Sydney Parkinson's journal, at the point reached in my first article, opens up two disputed questions regarding Captain Cook's first landing. The fiist is a matter of chronology. Captain Cook's journal fixes tbs date of anchoring at Gisborne on the 9th of October, 1769 ; Sydney Parkin&on says the 10th of the same month. No one~ on earth *an now determine which was right. Cook was usually accurate ; so was Sydney Parkinson, whose unadorned narrative can be checked in many places as showing a clear, keen observation which supplemented the official records of the captain on many occasions.. It was he who first committed to paper the fact of pumice lying about the coast, from which he inferred volcanic action inland. Sometimes, too, his details regarding these lamentable and fatal skirmishes with the Maoris are fuller. His interest in the Maoris was humane and | unflagging; their dress, their customs, I their works were faithfully delineated by i pen and. pencil, whereby this solitary and unquestioned* pioneer in . New Zealand art brings back to us the primitive children !of the" coast as the ship l s .company beheld them so long ago. And it is this accuracy and careful reverence for truth that certainty adds weight to his side of the second discrepancy between these journals. It is "generally stated that Captain Cook look .possession of the island for England at Mercury Bay about the middle of November. Sydney Parkinson states distinctly that the ceremony book place at the landing in Poverty Bay on the 10th of October. The entry for that day in Cook's journal records every particular as to landing of guns and marines and the • presence of the officers that would naturally accompany such a ceremony, which | undei the circumstances was probably I hurried and perfunctory enough, if it took place at all. On the other hand, Cook's statement as to the leisurely rite which was celebrated five weeks later at Mercury Bay can also be read as merely I applying to the bay itself.

This is the view taken by Mr Colenso in a paper written for, the Philosophical Society and published in the tenth volume of " Transactions." It is named in swinging eighteenth cenltry La.tin, and the curious, diffuse, pedantic style of the worthy divine rather heightens the Quaker charm with which he invests his young hero. How often, Mr Colenso says, had he himself traced in fancy the footsteps of the gentle artist on the wild East Coast, where these bush solitudes had been to him suchT'a Nature's picture-book as she painted for Agassiz in Longfellow's quaint verse. The value of these glad days of toil amid the luxuriant growths of old New Zealand is attested by Dr Hooker in his " Botany of New Zealand," where he speaks of the hundreds of excellent coloured pictures unpublished so late as 1878, but safely stored in the Banksian collection in the British Museum. Alas, that petty jealousy or malice should have even denied the diaad artist's name a place on the" published plates of Cook's journal !' Mr Colenso makes generous oonjplaint that of these strange Antipodean 1 flowers he reproduced first for the world not one bears his name. And for that ■ matter Sydney Parkinson fared poorly in the titular honours which the captain bestowed in perpetuity, geographically speaking. Some better thing might have borne his name than a tiny islet near Anama- Bay.

The portrait of himself on the first pfegfe of his journal arrests attention. A straight, slim, young man, seated at a writing table, a leafy t>lant lying beside his hand, the head held gravely and proudly, the long hair brushed straightly off the forehead, the features curiously long, but regular and delicate ; the mouth firm, small, and pure ; the eyes full and far-seeing ; the whole pose one of strength and gravity without sadness. His joxunal has no literary pretensions beside the evident stamp of troth and) freedom from irrelevant platitude. He can sum up the differences between the warlike Maoris and t-he gentler Tahitian in "a word or two : "They are in person much like the natives of Otahiti, v but more loud and rude in their address, and more unpolished than the Tahitians."

Farther on he permits himself a phrase or two on tho beauty of Tolago Bay: "The country about the bay is agreeable beyohd description, and with proper cultivation might be rendered a kind of 6eoond Paradise." But we must remember that Sydney Parkinson's literary reputation had to stand on memoranda never intended for the light. What passages may have graced that " fair copy " so unfairly reft from his brother later, we can never know now.

The East Coast of the North Island was the artist's happy hunting crowd. The 'stormy and unpeopled West Coast did not allure them even to land. Three weeks or so of ardent botanising in the Marlborough Sounds was all he got out of the dreary circumnavigation of the South Island, a land silent as the grave, in the gloomy majesty of its lofty rocks and its everlasting snowfields, dimly discerned! under sullen and baffling mist. Yet he speaks again and again of the romance of thts stern region, so inhospitable at the outset. On the 31st March, 1770, the Endeavour set sail from the sounds, and headed north for the east coast of Australia. Here,-- again, utterly alien trees »nd 'flowers rewarded the observation of Mr Banks and his able colleagues, together with observations of a new and unlovely race of men with whom Tupaea x>uld, hold no converse whatever. Of the proclaiming of New South- Wales as British territory, of thoir "wanderings about Carpentaria axid into tW» burning seas round Timor and Javft, we saed not speak here. Suffice it to -say that in October, exactly a year

after landing at Poverty Bay, the longtried ship was suffered to -anchor in Batavia, the Eastern capital of the Dutch Dominion. Now Batavia at that time of the ' rear was a veritable death-frap. Of the heavy toll paid by the Endeavour in those fatal waters, the first was the faithful interpreter Tupaea and his beloved seivant Taieto. Sydney Parkinson tells with simple pathos of Mr Banks's generous efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the Tahitians, of the obedience and patience of Taieto, sighing to the white companions of his exile: "My friends. I am dying," and of the despair of Tupaea when he knew Taieto was dead.

In December of that year a miserablydisabled ship's company left Batavia. Prince Island lay on their way, and. Parkinson's- journal ends abruptly after a description of it. The pen had fallen for ever from the feeble fmtrers. Early in January, 1771, Sydney Parkinson died on shipboard, and his body was committed to the deep. Bare, indeed, is the brief record of his death.

When the ship reached) England StaJifield Parkinson went to Mr Banks on behalf of his sister and mother to obtain possession of his "brother's property. And then, according to his account, ensued along and despicable struggle to deprive the family, of their due. Nothing of his subsequent scientific fame can redeem Sir Joseph Banks's memory from tke deep blot of dishonesty and chicanery which deprived the Parkinsons of all material benefit from the estate of the dead man — an estate partly made up ,of salary and promised bonus — in all, £500^ — and partly of shells, cloth, curios, weapons, etc., which had been the gifts of native friends. Of these, the shells alone were valued at £200. But perhaps the hottest contention centred round the dead man's journal, alleged by Mr Banks to be lost — a statement openly derided by the crew, who knew in what deservedl estimation the record was held by those who knew it« contents. By this time Banks and Hawkesworth, editor of Cook's MSS., were pushing on the publication of their own book, and did not scruple to obtain an injunction in Chancery to forbid the publication of this formidable rival — for Stanfield Parkinson had now obtained privately a thorough draft of the book from one source and another. Though this induction was presently annulled, it greatly spoiled the chances of Stanfield Parkinson's book. The sanctimonious Hawkesworth played an ignoble part in these proceedings, as lid Dr Fothergill, one-time friend to Stanfield, and professedly a mediator between him and Mr Banks. Mr Colenso even surmises, from his own 10 years' struggle to obtain a copy of Parkinson's journal, that the edition had been largely bought up and destroyed. Little mattered these- earthly contentions and treacheries to the gentle lover of Nature, sleeping his last sleep under the Indian seas. The fragrant memory of a loving, pure, God-fearing ' soul clings yet to the old . record, though New Zealand's first artist was never to receive crown or recompense on earth.