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A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean . . . In the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780
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General SummaryIN the long roll of English seamen and explorers, the name of Captain James Cook stands among the foremost. He was born of humble parents in the year 1728, entered the royal navy as a common sailor, and rose through his own efforts to the rank of master. Cook’s practical knowledge of the sea, together with the reputation which he had gained as a mathematician and astronomer, led to his selection in 1768 to command a scientific expedition to the South Pacific Ocean. This was the first of the three celebrated voyages which Cook made round the world. These voyages he himself described in as many volumes.
Historical SummaryLess than a year after his return to England Cook received a commission from George III to undertake still another voyage. This was for the purpose of solving the old problem of the Northwest Passage. Previous navigators had worked from the east through Hudson Bay; Cook was to try to find an opening on the northwest coast of America which would lead into Hudson Bay. He sailed in June, 1776, with the Resolution and the Discovery, visited Tasmania and New Zealand, and passed thence into the island world of the Pacific. Here he discovered several islands of the Hervey or Cook Archipelago (April, 1777). In February, 1778, he rediscovered the Hawaiian Islands, which a Spanish navigator had probably seen more than two centuries before, but whose existence had been forgotten. Cook then proceeded up the western coast of North America to Bering Strait and beyond, until he found the passage barred by ice. After examining both sides of the strait, he determined that the two continents of America and Asia approached each other as nearly as thirty-six miles. On the return voyage Cook again visited the Hawaiian group, which he named after his friend and patron, Lord Sandwich. Here he was slain by the natives (February, 1779). Thus closed the career of one who gave to England her title to Australia, and by his discoveries in the Pacific vastly added to geographical knowledge.
57. The Hawaiian Islanders1
In religious beliefs and in the manner of disposing of the
dead there are many resemblances between the customs of
the Hawaiians and those of other Polynesian peoples. The
natives of the Tonga Islands inter their dead in a very decent
manner, and they also inter their human sacrifices; but they
do not offer or expose either animals or even plants to their
gods, as far as we know. Those of Tahiti do not inter their
dead, but expose them to waste by time and putrefaction,
though the bones are afterwards buried; and, as this is the case,
it is very remarkable that they should inter the entire bodies of
their human sacrifices. They also offer various animals and
plants to their gods. . . . The people of the Hawaiian Islands,
again, inter both their common dead and human sacrifices as
in the Tonga Islands; but they resemble those of Tahiti in
offering animals and plants to their gods.
The taboo1 also prevails in Hawaii to its full extent, and
seemingly with much more rigor than even in the Tonga Islands.
For the people here always asked, with great eagerness and signs
of fear to offend, whether any particular thing which they desired
to see, or we were unwilling to show, was taboo? The maid raa,
or forbidden articles at the Society Islands, though doubtless
the same thing, did not seem to be so strictly observed by them,
except with respect to the dead, about whom we thought them
more superstitious than any of the others were. But these are
circumstances with which we are not as yet sufficiently acquainted
to be decisive about; and I shall only just observe, to show the
similitude in other matters connected with religion, that the
priests here are as numerous as at the other islands, if we may
judge from our being able, during our stay, to distinguish several
saying their prayers.
But whatever resemblance we might discover in the manners
of the people of Hawaii to those of Tahiti, these, of course, were
less striking than the coincidence of language. Indeed, the
languages of both places may be said to be almost word for word
the same. It is true that we sometimes heard various words
which were pronounced exactly as we had found at New Zealand
and the Tonga Islands; but though all the four dialects
are indisputably the same, the Hawaiians in general have neither
the strong guttural pronunciation of the former, nor a less
degree of it which also distinguishes the latter; and they have
not adopted the soft mode of the Tahitians in avoiding harsh
sounds. . . .
How shall we account for this people’s having spread itself
into so many detached islands, so widely separated from each
other and in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean? We find it
from New Zealand in the south, as far as the Hawaiian Islands
to the north, and, in another direction, from Easter Island to
the New Hebrides; that is, over an extent of sixty degrees of
latitude, or twelve hundred leagues north and south, and eighty-three
degrees of longitude, or sixteen hundred and sixty leagues
east and west. How much farther in either direction its colonies
reach is not known; but what we know already, in consequence
of this and our former voyage, warrants our pronouncing it to
be, though perhaps not the most numerous, certainly by far
the most extensive, people upon earth.
1 , bk. iii, ch. 12.
1 A word of Polynesian origin; Tonga tabu, Samoan tapu, Hawaiian kapu.
Chicago: A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean . . . In the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780 in Readings in Modern European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1926), 101–102. Original Sources, accessed April 24, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=Q81VUU86WXYR2DH.
MLA: . A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean . . . In the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780, in Readings in Modern European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, D.C. Heath, 1926, pp. 101–102. Original Sources. 24 Apr. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=Q81VUU86WXYR2DH.
Harvard: , A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean . . . In the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780. cited in 1926, Readings in Modern European History, ed. , D.C. Heath, Boston, pp.101–102. Original Sources, retrieved 24 April 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=Q81VUU86WXYR2DH.
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