New Britain herald., 1928-08-04
HAWAII OBSERVES
 HER ANNIVERSARY
Islands Discovered by Cook
 1@ YaE Ago

Washington. D. C.. Aug. 4.-Hos- pitable Honolulu is planning to out do itself with flowers and song in August l5th to 1sth) in honor of Captain James Cook. the great cir cumnayigator who discovered the Hawaiian Islands 15o years ago, and in welcome to thousands of guests from the mainland who will be making their first visit to Amer tca's western outpost,
 The celehration." says a bulle- tin from the Washington, D. c. headquarters of the National Geo graphic Society "centers attention on the personality of one of the most interesting of the great explor- CTS who have pushed back the from tiers of the unknown world"
 Continuing the bulletin quotes aA follows from a communication to the society from J. R. Hildebrand:
 Cook, Scientific Explorer
 Cook not only was a discoverer, he Was truly an explorer in survey ing and mapping what he found and observing what he saw. To that he added tile third, and immortal. distinction of finding a way to con- serve. the health of sailors. and thus enabled his countrymen to travel again the paths he marked out.
 "We: with New York with 34 hours of San Francisco by airplane mall. or within instant audible reach by twist of a radio dial, find 1t. hard to believe that Cook was opening pp the Pacific many years after .thw Thirteen Colonies had been settled, and that this English man wa@ nosing his way along the uncharteAl shores of what now are Oregon and Washington states a-.d British Columbia and Alaska while the Colonies were fighting their War sf Independence. ...-.
 "A map of the Pacific in 176s, the yAar that Cook first set sail for the South Seas. showed very few of the numerous island groups we know. and much of what it did show was wrong.
 oooh . tIlC W dS do toiC III his day in England as it is fa- miliar in America today-the story of self-taught man, whose school ing was negligible. His book learn- ing he gained between voyages. While at Whitby he begged a table and lamp from his employers housekeeper; years later. when compelled to winter at Halifax, he first encountered Euclid. The ways of genius are inscrutable. so why waste time speculating how Cook learned navigation, mathe- matics and astronomy?
 Entered Strange World
 After rounding Cape Horn and touching at several small islands. Cook. on April 13. 1769. reached Tahiti. and began his exploration of the archipelago. which he named the Society Islands, in honor Of the Royal Society under whose asupices he had sailed.
 Familiar as we now ave with the idyllic setting of the South Seas and the many curious customs of the natives, 1t is hard to realize the amazement of these voyagers, the first to observe intimately the exotic life of Polynesia, or to com- ppehend the excitement their tales aroused when theS returned to Eng land.
 Ut was a new world they gazed tH turyy one. What must have been the embarrassment of the studious Dr. Banks, for example, at the cere- monial welcome he received, which consisted of the men taking oil their garments and putting them on him and the members of his party?
 And yet more embarrassing, when chiefs. to pay him excep- tional honor. brought beautiful maidens to stand before him, ,disrobe and in this Evelike state, chastely to embrace him and as quickly re- tire?
 Before leaving Tahiti. Cook planted watermelons, oranges, Times and other seeds-an activity which, in addition to his subsequent gifts of poultry and pigs at other places, changed the geography of many is- lands.
 Cook did not get away, how ever, until two marines had felt the lure that was to attack many adventurers of a later day. They were recaptured in a mountain fastness, where each had taken to himself a tattooed wife trained not only to gather his cocoanuts and breadfruit, but to feed him silently at mealtime, and to make cloth and fishlines of tree bark and cocoanut fiber.
 "The only comfort they would have lacked. had they stayed. would have been their tobacco, which was unheard of in the island before Cooks visit.
 After visiting New Zealand and Australia. Cook put in at Batavia. Java, and then sailed home.
 No Land for Four Months
 ''His second voyage lasted three years and 1s days. For one period he was at sea for 122 days: at an- other time for III days, upon the latter occasion sailing for more than 10000 miles over strange seas with out once sighting land.
 Cook was the first Englishman to pierce the Antarctic Circle. dip- ping nearer the South Pola than any other. voyager had or was to venture again for fifty years. The Terra Incosnita fades away. The Pacific expands to its true propor- tions-some $500 miles from the Boring Strait to the frozen waters Of the Antarctic. Another large island. New Caledonia, breaks its