The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1892-05-26
In Re Captain Cooks Death.
(Concluded.l

1t is time now to pass to another ac-
cusation levelled against Captain
Cook regarding the healthfulness of his
crew and the connection alleged be-
tween his visit and the rapid decrease
of the native population.
E. Ellsworth Carey states broadly
that Cooks visit was the death knell
of the Hawaiian people, and says that
They then numbered half a million;
now, handful"
do not propose to enter upon a de-
tailed argument on this question, but
would refer inquirers to Sanitary In
structions for Hawaiians," by the late
w. M. Gibson, particularly to pages
1875 and 139, and 204-5. But as
this work is perhaps not very gener-
ally accessible, quote the following
passages: +" Consider that Captain
Cooks ships were succeeded in few
years after his visit, and still during
the ignorant and savage times, by
many other ships of all nations" and
that this intercourse had taken place
"for about forty years before any edu-
Gated and intelligent foreigners capa-
bic of making proper observation and
a correct record had arrived in the
country. And when these foreigners
began to write particulars of the past
history of the islands, they were de-
pendent for their statements about
events connected with the period Of
discovery upon the stories or tradi-
tions of ignorant and unciviliZed peo-
pie, ever ready to frame or to shape
story to meet the views of influential
civilized listeners;" (this last para
graph is of special importance) and
page 1897 cit is utterly improbable
and unworthy of consideration by an
enlightened and liberal mind that
such commander, and such an OBJ
server OF the laws of health, should be
the especial dissemination" of such
disease.
When Cook returned from his Sec
ond voyage round the world he was
made Fellow of the Royal Society;
nor only that, the Society presented
him with their annual gold medal;
and on this occasion their president,
Sir John Pringle, himself one of the
foremost physicians of the period,
said, in reference to the special merit
of Captain Cook and the grounds on
The paper which he had read on the
means employed to preserve health
Here are no vain boastings of the
empiric, nor ingenious and delusive
theories of the dogmatist, but con-
else and artiess relation of the means
by which, under Divine favor, Cap
tain Cook, with a company of a
hundred and eighteen men, performed
a voyage of three years and eighteen
days, throughout all the climates
from fifty-two degrees north to seven
ty-one degrees south, with the loss OF
only one man by Sickness
Cook had roughly estimated the
population of the islands at 100000
and is generally supposed to have
over-estimated. Gibson saws about
100000 was the basis of the mon.
arehy of Kamehameha the First.
During the greater part of the fifty
wears next after Cooks death, we rea(
OF sanguinary battles, massacres
whole districts depopulated and laiC
waste, with the Inevitable conse
quences of famine and disease. (Brie
Hist. passim.)
"The art of distilling was intro
duced by some Botany Bay convict
before the year 1900. At one time al
InOSt every cHlei n1u Ills SItli' LdTB
quantities of rum were also imported
and caused incalculable injury to tn
people Up. 1877. Measles was intro
duced in ls4s, and is supposed to hav
carried off one-tenth of the people Il
26O). Smallpox in 1853 caused tn
death of between $500 and 5000 peopl
Up. 27G), but f. Ellsworth Carey, no
content with blaming Cook for a.
these disasters, social and politica
adds just twenty-five per cent, a coo
100000, to the highest estimate {
population, and then says, "from ha
million to handful, y Cooks doing
There is one other point to which
desire to invite attention, the persons
character of James Cook.
E. Ellsworth Carey has a formiC
able-looking group of epithets, or
ginal and selected, with which /