The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING GIBBOENE, OCT. 8, 1906.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 187, 8 October 1906, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING GIBBOENE, OCT. 8, 1906.

To day will be celebrated ia GHsborne an event unique in the annals of history ; an event which few places on the globe are privileged to emulate.

It commemorates an achievement iu marine exploration and daring navigation unequalled in the history of the world, and honors ouo of Britain’s sea kiugs. It is au achievement that transcends the skill aud hardihood of

I tho great Columbus, and as a triumph of navigation it stands unequalled. Few people in the present day who are accustomed to look upon ami trav, 1 in the modern boating palaces that compos o our merchant iieot?, or tie leviathan battleships that are prepared to belch forth destruction to anything that threatens their safety on the high sea?, can adequately realise the diffiU culties, dangers, and discomforts that had to be overcome in the days of i Captain Cook whoa a long voyage iuto unknown seas was essayed. In ir.s day navigation wao an infantile science and shipbuilding was an ostremely crude art. Even the difficulties of provisioning a crew for a few months without serious risks of sickness and death from the terrible disease of : scurvy were practically insupmount'

able ; but Cook and liio bravo com pardons braved all thoso dangers urn successfully evaded thorn for yours n a stretch. 'I Jtoy did more than tlmt that made discoveries which sorvod j to extend Iho British uiitiou round the world, niado easy a national expansion thoy may without their aid havo !>• on oxtromoly dillicidtif possible, and they did more than their sbaro in o’ovating tho national honor and prestige above all other nations of the oaith in tho work of colonisation so necessary to a congested population, and without which national decay was inevitable. And although such was not then the immodiuto object of his intrepid voyaging, it was the direct result of it when time and opportunity made it moro desirable. When Cook touched Now Zealand just one hundred and thirty-seven yoars ago to-day, at tho spot whore now stands tho monument which will hear his name for all time, ho fouud it a wildornoss inhabited only by a race of cannibals that lived and diod in ignorance of tho existence of any othor raco than thoir own, who knew not whence they came or whither thoy woro to go ; who foarod only tho onslaughts of thoir tribal onemies and tho darkuosa that sur.voundod them in diurnal rotation without oven suspecting tho existence of a still moro terrible darkness that kept them in ignorance of other worlds than theirs, and permitted thorn to indulge their carnivorous propensities in a way that was as shocking a 3 it wa3 inhuman. Yot thoy were human, and waited only the enlightenment of civilization to transform them into a better people and to show them the responsibilities of thoir existence That these results did not immediately follow Cook’s discovory was due to othor causes than want of intention; but the results would never havo occurred wero it not for the discovery, and to him must bo given the primary credit for the improvement that has since taken place in the condition of the native race. But there is no used to laud this great man whose deeds are emblazoned on the scroll of fame and need not in reality the erection of a monument in an obscure corner of the earth to perpetuate the memory of them. Still the incidents of to-day afford such a flood of entertaining and instructive reminiscences that the opportunity cannot be lost of referring briefly to somo of them. One ospe- , cially arrests the attention of those who recognise what science has done in the expansion of the Empire as well as that of knowledge and human comfort. It is the fact that Cook’s primary mission when he set out on his three years’ voyage and discovered these isles was to observe from southern latitudes the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun’s disc. That in itself may seem to the ordinary mind to be relatively unimportant ; but when one remembers the state of scientific knowledge in that day, when icebergs were thought to have been produced from tho bed of the ocean and to lose the saline quality by the process of freezing; when our exact distance from the sun and the dimens ons of our elliptical course were undetermined and undetermiuable except by the observations which Cook and his assistants were despatched to obtain ; it will be seen how important was his mission after all quite apart from incidental geographical discoveries. But Cook succeeded in every respect beyond the wildest dreams of those who sent him on his errand, and the nation to which he belonged is incalculably the richer for it. If he did nothing else than to discover a favorable vantage point for tho observation of the planet’s journey across tho face of our solar orb, he would have accomplished sufficient to justify tho perpetuation of his name, for such chances are not frequent, and as the accuracy of many astronomical calculations, that wore necessary to a correct conception of tho marvellous work of the Great Author of the Universe, depended upon tho successful result of his mission, it will not be denied that that mission was an important one evon though he had not made a single mundane discovery. But he rnado the discoveries also, and to-day a civilized and enlightened people who have directly benefited by tho result of his great life’s work will moot to do him honor —people who enjoy the benefits of civilization and enlightens

ment, of freedom from savage attack

upon the spot where Cook had to defend his life and failed to get even a drop of water to slake his parched tongue; people who live beside the descendants of Cook’s persecutors in peace, harmony, and comfort, and who treat their dusky neighbors as fellow units of a great and growing Empire and extend to them the hand of

friendship and encouragement. Then and now gives more food for reflection than could possibly be treated in the space at our disposal; but the trans-

1 formations that will be so self-evident to everyone present to day need no elaboration or suggestion in order that the progress of the world in that com* paratively short span of its existence may be realised, and in no instance will this be more strikingly represented than in a comparison of the representative of England’s navy which Cook commanded in what he was pleased to name Poverty Bay and that which represents Britain’s predominant navy to-day at the same spot, though the latter gives no complete example of latest thunderers of the deep which fly the British flag. In the persons oi Cook, Nelson, and others is exemplified the fact that Britain has always had the men to rule the waves, and she does so to-day because she has the ships also. In the combination of both there is no roason to fear that the traditions so nobly handed down by such men as Captain Cook will ever be allowed to fade into a secondary place in the control of the oceans of the world.