CORNER'S LOG.

Around this production the battle has raged awhile. As it was exposed for sale more than once, failing to attract attention, and had evidently been manipulated, suspicion was naturally excited, and one well known official expert assured me it was practically worthless. A bad impression was made by the assertion of Mr. Corner that the Log was in Cook's handwriting. As the Record Office, as well as the British Museum, could show a number of Cook's own letters, official and private, experts could not be deceived.

It may, nevertheless, have proceeded from the same source as some others of a later date, as that one in Royal Possession, and the one in the keeping of the Admiralty. In fact, the latter is very similar in its text to Corner's Log, always excepting the reference to Botany Bay instead of Cook's own appellation of Stingray Harbour, and the insertion of the name of New South Wales, or New Wales, instead of the total absence of those words in ALL the Logs of Cook and his officers.

It was evident to me, as to others, that several copies, more or less similar, had been sent to England after the last day's record in any Log upon leaving New Holland, the name of which is alone the heading of any page of a Log.

I have not seen the so-called Queen's Log, but any one who examined Corner's Log, as many did, would see that it came here originally with blank spaces for certain days, and others were vacant to receive the proper names of places, which had, it is to be presumed, to be added in this country!!

It is, however, not a little puzzling to find that Cook, who is reported to have sent these copies from Batavia, while staying there, should have allowed a copy for the Admiralty to go off with New South Wales as the name of the new territory, and send another (Corner's) bearing the denomination of New Wales. Still more extraordinary that Cook's own well ascertained Logs, two in the British Museum and one at Sunderland—the only ones extant—should have neither New South Wales, New Wales, nor Botany Bay mentioned.

The knowledge of such circumstances might well have caused experts to entertain doubts.

I had this hawked-about Log in my possession, and took tracings of portions, satisfying a well-known historian, and valued public officer at the Record Office, that the Log before us had been tampered with.

Although one of the empty spaces had, as in other cases, been filled up, in a handwriting different from that in the text, as Port Jackson, which never appears in the Logs of Cook and his officers, it was easy to suppose it referred to a Secretary to the Admiralty, Sir George Jackson, afterwards recognised as Sir George Duckett, the great friend to Bishop Stortford.

Erasures and re-writing are not confined to Botany Bay. Rockingham Bay has evidently had two earlier changes. Halifax Bay has similarly suffered. If adopted, as some fancy, as the Log used by Dr. Hawkesworth, considerable freedom was used.

The signatures to all Cook's genuine logs and copies is Jam^s Cook, with a grand flourish; but Corner's has James Cook only.