CAPTAIN COOK.

Wanganui Chronicle, 31 January 1902, Page 1

CAPTAIN COOK.

A new version of the alleged cannibalism on the remains of Captain James Cook, who discovered these isflands, has been brought to light by Mr J. A. Boyd, Superintendent of Public Works afc Honolulu.

Captain Cook was killed in 1778, near Kealakakua Bay, on the Kona coast of the Island of Hawaii. According to accepted documents, parts of Captain Cook's body were eaten by the natives who killed him, in the ferocity of the passions engendered by the disputes and incidents which led to his killing; or, as some accounts have it, by mistake. Superintendent Boyd, who is a part Hawaiian, and well versed in Hawaiian tradition, recen'ly ni?de a visit to Kona in the course of his duties, and vvln'e tUre met many old Hawaiians who have lived there all their lives, and whose menionr-.s go back to the time when there were 3ianv

people living who were present at the encounter in which Captain Cook lost, lin hfe. According to their account, after the death of Captain Cook, who during most of his intercourse with the natives Had been regarded as a god, it was decided by the natives to make an offering of his body to the gods. The viscera- were taken out and placed in a calabash, to be offered to one of the powerful gods of the sea of the Hawaiian theogony, the viscera, being considered a higher and better offering than any other part of the body. The remainder of the body was to be'offered to a less powerful god. While the viscera was in the calabash it was found by some children, who, mistaking- it for the viscera of a, pig, which was considered a great delicacy, built a fire, cooked and ate it or part of it. The remainder of the body, as all accounts substantially agree, was afterwards returned to Cook's successor in command of the vessel. The part of Kona where Captain Cook was lulled, though numerously populated and a very important part of the islands at the time of his death, soon ceased to be important by the removal of the King's residence to Lahaina and afterwards to Honolulu, as Kamehameha the Great progressed with the conquest of the islands. It has remained ever since one of the portions of the islands least influenced by the influx of alien immigrants, and to-day the Hawaiians of Kona' retain their primitive habits of living, modes of thought, industries, and many of their pagan beliefs, and many vestiges of their practice. For this reason Boyd thinks that this account of the affair, traditional as it is, is indigenous to the locality where the actual event occurred, and therefore less likely to have, been invented because of a race pride to which the stigma of cannibalism was repugnant, or to be a perversion of half-read historical accounts, than if it had been found current in any other part of the islands. . .