CAPTAIN COOK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3782, 21 April 1928, Page 1

CAPTAIN COOK.

MURDERER’S CONFESSION.

SAILOR’S UNPUBLISHED DIARY.

A remarkable diary, containing a confession by the murderer of Captain Cook, has just been brought to light, states the Sydney Morning Herald. Strangely enough, it is published in the year set apart for the celebration of the death of this great man 150 years ago in the Hawaiian Islands.

■ This unpublished diary of a sailor who more than a century ago lived in Hawaii among the men who terminated the brilliant career of the great explorer has been foi*warded to Sir Joseph Carruthers, M.L.C., and the chief promoter of the sesquioentennial celebration in Honolulu next August. It is in the form of a letter from Mr. E. A. Beals, one of the. founders of the Pan-Pacific Research Institution, who declares that the sailor afterwards became a miner during the California “gold rush.”

The feature of the confession .is the regret expressed by the old chief for his participation In the crime of murdering Captain Cook; but the document itself is of absorbing interest. “Prom the Marquesas we shaped our course towards the San&vieh Islands, hut caught no whales,” wrote the sailor, C. L. F. Brown, in his autobiography manuscript in 1847. “No doubt you are familiar with the last moments of that great navigator, Captain Cook, who was killed on that day. A simple monument is placed over his lonely grave. While viewing the spot where he rests on one of these islands he loved so well I could npt help but feel sad over his untimely end. Captain Cook had his faults, who has not? No doubt he was arbitrary and overbearing at times, and that was one of the causes of his massacre. We must allow much charity for the natives at that time; they were' jealous of the 'pale faces’ and feared them.

There resided at the time I was there an old white-haired chief who helped kill Captain Cook. In conversing with, him, who spoke English well, he said. ‘For many years I felt proud of the act, and all who took part in it felt as I did, but now I feel ashaced of that act; my heart is warm now, a •few more moons and I shall be no more; my chiefs and warriors are all gone, and my people are fast disappearing before the white man. 1 now hate no one, and they tell me all Christians are happy hereafter; yes, all my people were good ■and our God approved. American men are great men; they know how to build ships and make many things which the Kanaka cannot make, but they cannot make the soul. Do you see, that burning mountain yonder (points to Mauna Loa). I once thought that was the devil’s home; we all thought so, and we all feared him. I have sacrificed the blood of my blood, ■the life of my life, to satisfy his ■anger. I had a sister and a loved child east into his burning bosom, but he was never satisfied.’

“That old man was truly eloquent, and he had lived in the days of the darkest heathenism, saw his friends sacrificed, and he had lived to see them partially disappearing. What that old man had experienced would fill volumes. He has since died, the last one that took part in the killing of Captain Cook, and perhaps was more sinned against than sinning.” Those who revere the memory of Captain Cook will be pleased to learn that the United States Government is honouring the memory of the great navigator, and invitations are to be sent to the different Governments of Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, asking for them to be represented at the celebrations, and if possible to send warships to join in the naval honouring of the memory of Captain Cook. The celebrations will take the form of the- erection of a monument where Captain Cook first landed in the island of Xvanai. A second celebration will be held at the spot where Captain Cook died, in Kealakekua Bay ,Hawaii, and a third celebration will be held in Honolulu at the lolaui Palace, which is the official home of the Territorial Parliament and of the Governor and Executive Officers.