HOW CAPTAIN COOK WAS MURDERED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1643, 23 August 1887, Page 3

HOW CAPTAIN COOK WAS MURDERED.

About Captain Cok and his connection with ihe Sandwich Islands not a little ignorance is abroad m the community. We ro srepreeent the general publio m no great degree if we state our belief that the majority of them to this day are under the impression that Captain Cook was ornelly and uoprovokedly massacred by a few savages, that he was afterwards roasted and eaten * and that the " King of the Cannibal Is'ands " is fitly represented by the monarch who at precent ruleß the Hawaiian group, and who has been bo long m diplomat c re'atione with us. In reali'y, none of these' popular beliefs are correct. Captain Cook was an accompli9hep navigator, but his manners bad to the end of his life a strong flavor of the Whitby collier'B cubin-boy Like the seamen of his »ge, he had little sympathy with or respect for the natives of the countries he came In contact with. They were simply " black?," to be treated as Bnch, without much regard for honor on the part of the mariner, or delicacy of feeling on the side of the natives. Accordingly, when Cook came to the Sandwich Islands he returned the kindness of the simple natives with harshness, and often injustice. He found that they believed him the long-lost god -Rono or Lono, whom tradition fabled would some Jay return. On this superstition he worked, but it was his death-warrant. la the course of his dispute at Kealakeakua Bay he was accidentally struck and wa* heard to groan. Ins'antly the news spread among the childlike natives, and on their excited minds ac'ed like a wet blanket. "He can be no god," they cried, and m the revulsion of feeling which followed he was fallen upon and stabbed to death." He wan not, however, eaten. The Sandwich Islander* never were — at least habitually— cannibals, and even an occasional addiction to the use of human flash among them is indignantly denied by all their historians. Cook's body waß curried to a place still shown, beyond the range ,of the -cannon of his Bhipß, the flash stripped off hia bones, and burned on an altar still standing, acd his bones baried with all the rites attending the. obsequies of their own chiefs. Nor was anything but honor intended m all th's. ■ To burn h's flash was the greatest respeot which, m tbeir eyes, could be paid to him. No portion of his body was eaten ezoapt his heart Two children found it hanging tip m a hot, and,- thinking it was a dog's heart, devoured it unwittingly. One of them not long since died m Honolulu, a very old man. The death of Cook ia to this day looked upon by the Natives as a Bad stain on their history. Kapina Kuke, bb they call him, is among the lower-class : Hawailans considered m the light of a pasred personage, and no greater insult can te neaped upon them than to hint at the killing and eating cf that mythical being.— 1 ' The Countries of the World." ■SSSWSWSSWSfiSWSMSWaSISWSBSISMSMSMSSMSMi «