The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-02-22 00:00:00

THE CENTENARY OF CAPTAIN COOK.

The Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, writing from
Paris on Friday night, in last week, gives the follow-
ing account of a meeting of the Geographical Society of
France, to celebrate the Centenary of the death of Captain
Cook :

"The G-eographical Society of France celebrated this
evening the Centenary of the death of England's
greatest navigator, Captain Cook, which occurred on
Feb. 14, 1779. It was a happy inspiration, and one
tending to bind all the more closely two Powers whose
interests are almost identical. The extraordinary
meeting was held at the Society's hotel, on the Boule-
vard St. Germain, and began punctually at eight
o'clock. The hall, which was crowded to repletion, was
decorated with the flags of England and France,
and round the walls were hung the charts of the
gallant sailor lent by our Anmiralty in honour of the
occasion. Other interesting objects were also dis-
played, and among them a formidable club which
struck the fatal blow that laid Coek low, never more
to rise. These, together with many other articles of
note, also lent by the Admiralty, will be exhibited to-
morrow and the following clay at the society's hotel.
A wellgot up map, illustrative of the voyages made by
Captain Cook, was also presented to each of the
audience, who were thereby enabled to follow
with the greatest ease the remarks of the
differen speakers. The chair was occupied
by Admiral La Roncibre Le Noury, President of
the Society, who was supported on the platform
by several gentlemen of dhtinction in the scientific
world. The gallant old Admiral, happy in being able
to render a well-deserved tribute to the memory of
another distinguished seaman, opened the proceedings
with a short introduction, in which he explained that
the ioea of celebrating( the Centenary had originated
with several members of the society, who had been as-
sisted in their efforts to do justice to the occasion by
the British Admiralty. He then spoke in glowing
terms of Captain Cook's extr-kordinary genius, not
only in the exercise of his profession, but as a man
of science. Admiral La Roncire Le Noury concluded
with a few words of eulogiam for the splendid service
to which Cook belonged, namely, the British Navy.
M. William Huber, a colonel in the Swiss Army, then
gave an account of the life and voyages of the veteran
whom they all delighted to honour. He spoke of
Cook's wonderful abilities, of his perfect simplicity, of
his kind and humane disposition and untiring zeal.
Hard as iron, able to endure any amount of hardship,
and heat and cold alike, James Cook was the very
man for the work he loved so well, and grandly did
he carry out his ideas. He discovered Australia, New
Zealand, and many of the Pacific isles, and he made
his mark in the Arctic Seas as well. The story of
Cook's murder was told in graphic language, and
when the speaker acknowledged the services rendered
to civilisation by the British race, and said that
even during England's wars with France the naval
officers of the latter country had strict oi ders
never to interfere with our cruisers of discovery,
the hall re echoed with applause, headed by
the Admiral and the members on the platform. It was
a generous trait in the character of a great and
chivalrous nation. Doctor Hamy followed with an
able paper on "Cook's Discoveries in Oceania,"
viewed from a purely scientific aLd anthropological
aspect; and then M. de Varigny, who has been for
many years a Consul in those regions, gave an inte-
resting account of modern Oceania, its commerce,
resources, and so on. A few words from the gallant
President, and then closed a meeting for which the
promoters deserve the hearty thanks of every patriotic
Englishman who takes a pride in the glorious deeds
of his countrymen in every quarter of the globe."

The Tithes of Monday gives the following leader com-
menting upon the above celebration of the Centenary of
Captain Cook :

The French geographers have been celebrating the
centenary ef Captain Cook's death. A great discoverer
belongs to the whole world; and no better representa-
tive of Europe could be chosen than FranFe to lay
wreaths on an honoured grave. If English science was
conspicuous by its absence from the commemoration,
the fact, it may be suggested, is attributable, not to
neglect, but to national modesty, The benefit of
Cook's discoveries accrues to humanity at large, or,
at any rate' to that portion of it which wears a white
akin. But the qualities which produced them
were in an extraordinary degree English, The
French Geographical Society met en Friday to
glorify a character compounded of steadfastness of
purpose, courage which took no delight in danger for
danger's sake, but which within the limits of duty was
absolute and fearless, gentleness and justice to strange
types inspired by respect not so much for them as for
the explorer himself, clearness of scientific insight
rather than scientific genius, a bearing in perils much
as if he were reading a paper before the Royal Society,
and, lastly, an utter unconsciousness that the doer of
great deeds was a hero. The geographers of Bur-
ling,ton House may have feared that they would be
made to blush at elaborate panegyrics on a life spent
in the simple performance of an Englishman's duty.
They could have adied little to the long record of
adventures dared without romance and surmounted
without exultation. Cook as he voyaged from isle to isle,
and, first of Europeans, beheld images of Paradise far
exceedingraptures whatever Milton's fancy conjured up, ?ell
and saw no visions. In one of his
into
no
earlier expeditions he tells how a general opinion pre-
vailed on board that there was land to windward;
"but," writes Cook, " I did not think myself at liberty
to search for what I was not sure to find." If we
study his logs in the colourless compilation of his
historiographer, Dr. Hawkesworth, we find no poetic
anticipations of that future which is now the pre-
sent, He did not consider himself free to let his
fancy any more than his helmsman steer among
regions from which he might be unable to recall it
at will. Discoveries whieh were to set fresh and pre-
cious gems in the English crown are chronicled as
simply as if the freight of the Resolution had been
coals instead of a new Empire. The Hawaiians
beheld in him a god; he thought himself no higher
than a superior master mariner. His countrymen.
after their custom with the heroes of bloodless
victories, took him at his own estimate; French
savants perceive that the Hawaiians were not alto-
gether self-deceived, that in the simple mariner there
was yet something of divinity.
"Cook merits a high rank among English worthies.
Without the intuition which is like a gift of prophecy,
he could put together a chain of scientific reasoning
link by link. He had not the genius which leaps, but
his intelligence seldom or never tripped. He was an
Englishman of a class, wry far from co-extensive with
the whole nation, which appears to have been born
web-footed. The son of a farm labourer, the app., en-
tice to a village haberdasher, he realized the ambition
of a Robinson Ciusoe in an infinitely more practical
and self-satisfying way, His seamanship was a con-
dition of the success of Wolfe at Quebec. The
French had removed the buoys from the St. Lawrence.
Cook, then a master on board the Mercury, made
new soundings, and piloted the boats to the attack.
We do not know if this incident in his career were
within the recollection of the French geographers on
Friday. If it had been, it would have only intensified
their generous admiration for the discoverer whom at
a later date their Government, though at war with
England, bade its commanders treat as a friend of
humanity, and therefore of France. He was
always ready to do whatever there was to be
done, Whatever he did he did with all his
might, In his leisure he studied astronomy, When
the Royal Society required the services of an officer
to command an expedition sent to observe the
transit of Venus, Cook was found to fulfil
the necessary conditions of knowledge ; and he was
chosen. He was despatched to co-operate in an astro-
nomical work, and he used the opportunity to become
the English Columbus. Yet no two illustrious men
can well have been more unlike than Cook and
Columbus. Columbus had a scientific imagination as
vivid as that
of Newton. His discovery of a new
world was as much a result of calculation as the law
of gravitation. There was but one difference, that
the astronomer's conclusions confirmed his hypcothesie
and the Genoese navigator's triumph falsified his
Science. Cook,
unlike Columbus, was possessed by
no overmastering faith which he insisted on vindi-
cating by the evidence of facts. He besieged no Courts;
he did not bribe the
cupidity of princes with dreams
of new Indies. For himself he had no ambition after
conquests in other fields to be won by the price he
might receive for success in the enterprise before him.
A naval captain'e rank and a post in Greenwich
Hospital when he should be crippled by incessant
voyaging seemed to him a fair and reasonable recom-
pense for all he bad done for the British Crown. Yet
there is one curious point of resemblance in the two
careers. Both owed their primary impulse to a
geographicel delusion. Columbus would never have
found the New World bad he not believed that he
was on a route of his own to the old. Cook gave
England her Pacific empire as the result of a futile,
search after supposed great southern continent. Eng-
lish geographers very likely lamented the practical
failure of an expedition which had discovered no vast
Ante& ic land, and only rediscovered and appropriated
New Zealand to Great Britain. A second circum-
navigation of the globe was equally fruitless in grasp-
ing hold of the Antertic will-o'-the-wisp. But in the
course of it Cook discovered New Caledonia of recent
evil fame, and ransacked every corner of the Pacific
Ocean. If, however, "the tenacious notion of an
Antartic continent," as M. Hither describes it, had at
length been dispelled, there was always the North-
West Passage. The sailor who bad already twice
circumnavigated the globe was, within less than a year
from his return from the Paciffc, despatched on the
quest of a route back to Europe through Behring's
Straits. For the third time his voyage failed in its as-
signed object. He was twice foiled by the ice, and dis-
covered the Sandwich Islands instead of the North-West
Passage. In Hawaii came the end of his voyagings. He
died the victim of a miserable misconception, for
which neither he nor the Sandwich Islanders can justly
be blamed. In August, 1768, Cook had sailed from
Plymouth on his first great voyage. In February, 1779,
he was slain. In these ten years and a half he had
accomplished more for England than Marlborough
by all his victories. He had claimed New
Zealand and New South Wales for England ; he
had proved that Australia was an island, and that it

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and New Guinea were separate; he had discovered New
Caledonia, the Sandwich Islands, and a multitude
of other island groups. But the mere catalogue of
new lands discovered, or re-discovered, conveys no im-
pression o? the real claims of Cook on the gratitude of
his countrymen. One or another island, or group of
in the vast Pacific may render allegiance to some
other than the English flag. Great Britain, however,
is virtual mistress of ie Pacific. That she is this she
owes to the man whose deeds her rulers thought they
had adequately rewarded with post rank in the
Navy, whose widow they consoled for her noble hus-
band's death with a pension of two hundred a year,
and whose memory, save for a monumental statue in
Sydney. Englishmen have left it to Frenchmen to
honour."

"England and Europe at large are deeply indebted to
Captain Cook for a boundlcza new estate added to
their patrimony. Had he not shown them the way to
Australasia, doubtless some other man would. But
the same might be said of all important discoveries
and inventions. The recipients of a benefit owe
gratitude to some one; their only honourable course
is to render it to the man who has effected a result by
which they are the gainers. The original occu-
pants of the new world into the ownership
of which Europe has entered can, we fear,
scarcely be expected to feel much thank.
fulness. It is a sad counterpoise to the natural
pleasure in contemplating the speed with which
white races reclaim the half waste places of the earth
to reflect on the actual or prospective fading away of
the former possessors before their march. In the whole
pleasant account of the festival of Friday there is,
perhaps, no more entirely satisfactory point than the
testimony offered by M. de Varigny to the power the
native Hawaiians have shown of holding their own.
Hawaii has a lovely territory, rich in all the gifts of
climate and soil which make life happy, and might
keep it innocent. As yet the aborigines have main-
tained their self-government. We trust that no petty
international jealousies or political ambition will
interfere with the fair trial of the experiment, still
pending, whether a race like theirs can succeed
in administering its affairs for itself, though on the
model of white civilization. The white settlers in
Hawaii are, however, even more ,mportant parties te
the experiment than the States of which they are sub-
jects. A right example in them is essential to the
preservation of a good native moral tone; and private
morality is a necessary condition of political vitality in
a native Pacific population. The State and the in-
dividual can never be kept entirely separate. In a
people which fifty years ago might have been described
as savage, the line of demarcation is well-nigh in-
visible. The friends of Hawaiian independence will
compass their laudable object best by devoting all
their energies to encouraging, by practice as well as
precept, the elevation of the Hawaiian standard of
family life,"

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