A Cook Monument

New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1906, Page 9

A Cook Monument

f - Phil May; added..much ,to t the gaiety .of the nations' .by his series of 'things that might', have 'been .-.. said. Our -monuments- to__our Jgreat men are droll .(or rather melancholy) examplis' :0f,.-things' that., might Hiave 'been, done differently. The goodness/ oi the intention and the poverty of the performance - wrap , the -beholder in la most humorous sadness. Witness/ for instance, the grotesque marble Thing that stands on its corns in .front of our .Parliament House ' and 'brings a Mush upon the face of the rising moon. ,' There are monuments 'we wot of, poor in art", but as good as, or better than, the cause .they stand for. But that caricature in marble was a sorry joke to play upon the memory,of John Ballance. He deserved better things from a country/ that he :had loved and v served so well. But the rn,emoriaLr < was c \indly meant. It was as well intended as' thei. action of the warmhearted old elephant that met a, brood of orphan'chicks in the days when pigs were swine and turkeys chewed tobacco. ' Poor things ', said the elephant, ' they have no mother to sit upon them ; but I will .be r a mother to them ; I will sit upon them '. And she did. Good intentions do pretty nearly as much harm • as 'does downright malice in this ' wale of tears '.

We venture the hope that Captain Cook has this week fared better at Gisborne than did Ballance at Wellington and Wanganui. On Monday, a momument to the great navigator * was. unveilod „ near the' spot at Gisborne where he landed on October 8, 1769—137 years ago. The event deserved a fitting memorial. It was Cook's third g<reat voyage of discovery. He was ploughing, a furrow round the earth with, the keel of the ' Endeavor ', after the scientists on board the okl wooden sailer had observed the transit of Venus frora a point of vantage on Tahiti. Thence he headed away in search of a great southern continent that was supposed to stretch from far Antarctica up to 40 degrees South. But the great lone lamTproved to be a sailors' myth. Cook then headed away^ to the north-west, slicing -the surface of the Southern ' Ocean till, on that October morning, he ' cast anchor in , Poverty Bay. The Maoris (then numerous on the coast) were not at the time disposed to receive, pakehawisitors\ They said so with considerable emphasis, • and pounded the earth till it_ shook with the . wild"" rhyttim of the war-dance, performed, -by lusty ' caftriibals.'that each other eat '. So Cook sailed away. He sailed around New Zealand (he was .the first white manrthat did so), charted its coasts, "found that it was noV( a s Tasman had supposed) a part l of New Holland (Australia), and discovered and sailed through, the straits which I)ear s his name. In 1770 he dooked his last -for that voyage on New Zealand, at Gape .Farewell, anchored in Botany. Bay, and found that 'Tasmania! i s an island, and not (as had been thought) a' paifi/ of the Australian mainlands Pie next explored,, charted, and in. part- discovered, jtwo/ thousand .miles of • the eastern coast of Australia, narrowly,, escaped j.ship-:; wreck, and reached home in 1771, after,, an adyehr, turous three-years' voyage. , .. .., , ,•- ..', \ m ' Macaulay says an. his history ;tna't there'-werer, gentle* men- and seamen in the navy of ...th^Second Charles. 1 But ', he added-, ' the seamen wer-e .. not gentlemen,'* and the gentlemen , were , not seajnen '. .-, Cpok,^the (York-; shire farm-laborer's son, was one » of.', natures-- ' gentlemen. v And he, was a seaman from the crown of his bob-wig to the. soles of his big sea-boots. /For .has* work he well deserves 'the title 1 of great* For- (as.Disraeli N say.s in Ms ' Coningsby 'j greatness happily no longer depends' oh rentals— lhe' world is too rich \ nor

on pedigrees-rthe world is - too knowing. The Gisborne people have had a happy thought in commemorating the connection of the great navigator and maritime explorer with their Bay.,- And a happy •thought deserves happy expression, whether it be in words that pass or in the bronze or marble that endures. . > , ' .