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(Continued from page 133.) That Captain Cook the great explorer was also a great gentleman is, or should be, one of the commonplaces of history. His own " Voyages " and the testimony of his ollicers and his chiefs at the Admiralty concur in showing that he was firm and humane both to his crews and to the South Sea natives whom he encountered. But as there appears to be some ill-informed or ill-natured persons who have libelled Cook, Sir Joseph Carruthers, formerly Premier of New South Wales, has written a book to confute them. Captain James Cook, R.N., 150 Years After (Murray, 7s. tid.) details the charges made in 1779 by an American who served under Cook, and other vague insinuations, and disposes of them by the help of evidence gathered in Hawaii and else- where. Cook was killed by an unruly mob of natives who were egged on by a thievish chief and did not perhaps realize what they were doing. But it is clear that Cook was not in fault, since he had always treated the natives civilly and kept his men well in hand. According to Sir Joseph, the Hawaiians were not cannibals.
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