CAPTAIN COOK’S LETTERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1256, 9 June 1914, Page 4

CAPTAIN COOK’S LETTERS.

NEW ZEALAND VISITS. EX PER FENCES AMONG Maoris. a 2ZThe. anm-.;incem«i. w~.-» made by | c;ible a f ~w days ago me o iginal: four of Ca {Tab ik’s letters wue shortly to t ;: owed at auction in Loudon, and already representations have been mrJe to the Commonwealth Government that the letters should be 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 Argus. They were written to Captain John Walker, of Whitby, in whose employ Cook began his seafaring life, and there are many interesting references 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, 177 1 » r.fter his return from the first of his three great voyages of discovery. In this he says that in the beginning of August, 1769, he quitted the “tropikle regions,” and steered to the southward. This brought him to New Zealand, which was thought up till then to be a southern continent. ‘‘But I,” writes the explorer, “found it to be two large islands, both of which I circum-navigated in the space of six mouths.” The inhabitants be 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 were not known. Our firearms gave us the superiority. At first some of them were killed, but we at last learnt how to manage them without taking 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 the latitude of 3Sdeg, south. I explored the coast of this country (which I called New South Wales). . .We

sailed this coast for 400 leagues by the lead without ever having a leadsman out of the chaines. . .

We at last surmounted all difficulties, a>-d got into the India Sea b. c. passage entirely new ” rhe third leUer is dated September, 1705 and • uitains a brief resume of his second voyage. He takes his friend through the “ vast

fields of floating ice and much foggy weather, and large isles of floating mountains of ice,” in the roaring ’4o’s and ’s;’ Somehow or other he misses Australia and brings up at New Zealand, and, leaving this land, proceeded to Ouhe. Then Wi- 10 New Zealand, and again further into the Ac retie, where “beating ab> ‘ ' we:n the latitude of 48.0%'.. fend 6ocleg., and ouce I got as high *•> yr.iodeg., and farther it was not possible to go for Ice which lay as firm as land; here we saw ice mountains whose lofty summits were lost in the 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 for 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 New Zealand once more, where he found that some of the Adventurer’s crew bad been killed and eaten by the Maoris. “That the New Zealanders are cannibals,” he says, “will no longer be disputed, not only from the melancholy fate of the Adventurer’s people, and Captain Marion and his fellowsufferers, but from what I and my whole crew have seen with our eyes. Nevertheless, I think them a good sort of people—at least, I have always found good treatment amongst them.”