CAPTAIN COOK'S LETTERS

Otago Witness, Issue 3145, 24 June 1914, Page 87

CAPTAIN COOK'S LETTERS

NEW ZEALAND VISITS. (Fbou Odb Own Coubespondent.) SYDNEY, May 23. The announcement was made by cable a few days ago that the originals of four of Captain Cook’s letters were shortly to be offered at auction in London, and already representations have been made to tho Commonwealth Government that the letters should bo bought for Australia. There are already copies of these letters in Melbourne in the private collection of Mr E. A. Petherick, and extracts from them have been printed in the Melbourne Argue. They were written to Captain John Walker, of Whitby, in whose employ Cook began his seafaring life, and there are many interesting rolerenecs in them to the great navigator's visits to New Zealand. The first of the letters is dated from Mile End, London, on September 18, 1771, after his return from the first of his three great voyages of discovery. In this ho says that in tho beginning of August, 1769, he quitted the “ tropikle regions” and steered to the southward. This brought him New Zealand, A’hich was thought up till then to be a southern continent, ‘‘but I,” writes tho explorer, “ found it to be two large islands, both of which I circumnavigated in tho space of six months.” The inhabitants he spoke of as fearless, brave, and warlike, “with sentiments void of treachery,” the tribute of. brave to brave. Cook's men “ had frequent skirmishes with them, always when we wore not known; our firearms gave us tho superiority; at first some of them were kill’d, but we at last learnt how to manage them without tak’ng away their lives.” The Maoris lived upon fish, fernroot, potatoes, and “yamms.” They were also not above dog. Cook mentions the New Zealand flax. It was, he says, “of a quality like hemp or flax, but superior to either. Then the voyagers go on to New Holland. “We fell in with the Land in tho latitude of 38deg. south. I explored tho cost of this country (which I called New South Wales). . . . We sailed this coast for 400 leagues by tho lead, without everhaving a- leadsman out of the ohaines. . . We at last surmounted all difficulties, and got into the India Sea by a passage entirely new. ' The third letter is dated September, 1775. and contains a brief resume of his second voyage. He takes his friend through the “ vast fields of floating ice and much fogy weather, and large isles of floating mountains of Ice,” in tho roaring forties, and fifties. Somehow he misses Australia and brings up at Now Zealand, and, leaving this land, proceeded to Otaheitc. Then back to New Zealand and again further into tho Antarctic, where “beating about between the latitude of 48deg. and 68deg., and once I got as high as 71.10 deg., and farther it was not possible to go, for Icc -which lay as firm as land; here we saw Ice mountains, whose lofty summits were lost in tho clouds. I was now fully satisfied that there was no Southern Continent.” He stood away north and brought up at Easter Island, where he describes the extraordinary and mysterious statues fcfr which this place is famous. He visited many islands, and finally “ discovered a large Island which I called Nova Caledonia.” The people he describes as friendly, “ stout and well-made people of a dark colour, with long • frizzled hair, and little clothing.” Then back to Now Zealand once more, where he found that- some of the “Adventurer’s” crew had been killed and eaten by the Maoris. “ That the New Zealanders are cannibals,” lie says, “ will no longer be disputed, not only from the melancholy fate of the ‘Adventurer’s’ people and Captain Marion and his fellowsuffers. but from what I and mv whole crew have soon with our eyes. Nevertheless, I think them a good sort of people, at least I have always found good treatment amongst them.”