EARLY HAWAIIAN HISTORY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16360, 24 February 1921, Page 6

EARLY HAWAIIAN HISTORY.

RECORDS RECENTLY UNEARTHED. i Fkom Our Correspond».xt.j LONDON, January 12. Visitors to Honolulu wlio have found time to see the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum mav have remarked on a relic there of early occupation of Pacific islands. It is an inscription recording tile fact that a certain bay in Hawaii was visited on July 4.. 1843, by H.M.S. Cary afoot, to the captain of which! Irord George Paulet, as representative of her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria, these islands were ceded on February 20. 1843. Th<i complete history of this historic relic is now recorded in the Royal Geographical Society’s Journal for January, 1921, by Captain Lord Claud Hamilton, as related to him during his visit there with the Prince of Wales during the tour of the Renown. The history of this and other reli<*s was related to Lord Claud by Captain L. G. Blackman, of Honolulu. Besides the inscription set up by Captain Lord Paulet. there are two others, but all three are now reft from their original site, the spot where Captain Cook fell. For a long time the stump of a cocoanut palm grew by the spot where he fell, its top having been broken off by a ball from Cook’s ship. It is said that the top ot the palm was taken home to England by Captain Bruce of the Tmogene. Captain Bruce at any rate affixed the first inscription on the stump: ‘‘Near this spot fell Captain James Cook, R.A., the renowned circumnavigator who discovered these islands, 1778. H.S.S. Imogene. October. 1837.” This inscription had various vicissitudes, for the stump having fallen, ft was used as a tie-vfp by the natives for their canoes. The inscription was taken from the stump by a native to patch his boat, ancl is now in the possession of a half-Hawaiian who refuses to give ft tip to the Government, which is anxious to obtain the historic relic. Two other later inscriptions were put on the stump. One is: “This sheet of coppering was pu't on by the Sparrowhawk, September 16, 1839. in order to preserve the monument to the memory of Captain Cook ” ; the other is that which lies in the Honolulu Museum. ' These relics no longer mark the famous spot, hut a monument of earlier date is still standing at Kealakekua Bay in very much its original state, no doubt owing to the marvellous climate and to tho qtialitv ot the wood of which it is composed. oliia le hua (Metroideros polymorphia >. It stands on a. bold lava headland, two miles from where ho fell, and consists of a small cairn of lava boulders, on which stands a roughly hewn pole, the top of the stone bearing a signboard on which is fixed a copper plate. The inscription is : In Memory of Captain James Cook, R-N.. who discovered these islands The year of our Lord 1778. This humble monument is erected by his fellow countrymen The year of our Lord 1825. This lonely cairn, actually the earliest extant and probably the earliest to perpetuate Cook’s memory, situated at some.distance from an abandoned road, jhs in the middle of an almost impassable now of the palioehoe typo of lava- It ■ appears toJbe known to the older residents ot TCona, although it is isolated and difficult of approach, hut little interest has been taken in .it. The editor of the Geographical Journal'in a footnote says “ Voyage of H.M.S. Llondo to the Sandwich Islands, 1824-5 (published by John Murray), relates that Captain Lord Bvron erected a cross to tho memory of Captain Cook on tiie spot where his body was burnt.”