Captain Cook.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 490, 19 July 1890, Page 4

Captain Cook.

Walter Besant’s sketch of Captain Cook in the English Men of Action series forms a good companion volume to Clark Russel’s monograph on Dampier. It gives a striking picture ot the man who rose from the forecastle by sheer force of character to become the greatest navigator of his age. The details for reconstructing the life oi Cook are meagre. It is known chat he came of Scotcli parents, and that he was apprenticed to a tradesman at Staithos, on the Yorkshire coast. There his imagination was fired by stories of the sailors who con-

gregated in the fishing town, and he ran away in his fourteenth year. How he acquired in these early years the store of knowledge that he afterwards exhibited is a mystery, but the fact remains that ho learned navigation, astronomy, tnarino surveying, and many other branches of science, and that in surveying and charting he had no equal in his day. In the first twenty-rive years of life at sea he had become master of several ships and had been employed by Government in makingjjcharts of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence river. Then, when he was in his prime, came the offer to command the expedition to the South Pacific. He accepted, and in the years that followed did the work on which hts fame rests. Mr Besant has found old unpublished journals of several of Cook’s companions which throw a little additional light on his South Sea expeditions and on his death. There is no question that this was due to his hasty temper, of which ho gave many proofs during these voyages. What Cook did in these three voyages is compactly stated by Mr Besant in this paragraph : He discovered the Society Islands; he proved Jjfew Zealand to be two islands, end he surveyed its coasts; ho followed tlie unknown coast of New Holland for 2,000 miles, end proved that it was separated from New Guinea ; he traversed the Antr arctic Ocean on three successive voyages, sailing completely round the globe in its high iatitudes, and proving that the dream of the great southern continent bad no foundation, unless it was close around the pole, and so beyond the reach of ships ; he discovered and explored a great part of the coast of New Caledonia, the largest island in the South Pacific next to New Zealand ; ho found the desolate island of Georgia, and Sandwichland, the sou themmoj?t lan yet known ; ha discovered the fair and fertile archipelago called the Sandwich Islands; lie explored 3,500 miles of the North American coast, and he traversed the icy seas of the North Pacific, as he had done in the south, in search of the passage which he failed to discover. All this without counting the small islands which he found scatteied about the Pacific. Probably Cook’s greatest claim to the regard of the sailor was that he was the first to discover a remedy for scurvy, then the terror of long voyages. In his tedious expeditions Cook is represented by his associates as always at work, never weary of study oi experiment on the subject which he had in hand, holding little intercourse with his men—a man who was never sick, never tired, never grumbled over coarse food or bad weather. The picture of Captain Cook presented here is that of one of the stoutest seamen who evei* carried the Hag of England into strange seas, and it is well worth studying for its lessons of .courage, self-denial, skill, strength, and pprseverapqc.