THE BRITON'S GAIN
In the year 1741 a lad was apprenticed to a haberdasher in a small town near Whitby in Yorkshire. His name was James Cook, and he was from the first an example of the square peg in the round hole. So loose was the fit that the peg presently fell out and rolled away. In other words, young Cook, not being cut out for a haberdasher, got himself apprenticed aboard a collier. His ability to hand, reef and steer was so much greater than his aptitude for wielding a yardstick that, as soon as his time was out, he was raised to the position of mate.
In 1755, before he was twenty-seven, this remarkable youth joined the King's navy as an ordinary seaman. Observe what he accomplished before ten years were out by his own industry.
Strictly attentive to duty, he rose rapidly, and thrice in succession was master on a sloop of war, the last occasion being when Quebec was wrested from the French. That done, he surveyed and charted the St. Lawrence from Quebec to the sea, although "up to that time" he had "scarcely ever used a pencil, and had no knowledge of drawing." But he had "read Euclid" ever since he joined the navy, and for recreation enjoyed "the study of astronomy and kindred sciences." Think of it—the haberdasher's boy, the collier's mate!
The ten years are not yet past. Our hero helped in 1762 to recapture Newfoundland from the French, and before 1763 was out he was back in those cold seas, surveying the coasts. Another twelvemonth saw him appointed Marine Surveyor of Newfoundland and Labrador, under the orders of his old captain, Sir Hugh Palliser.
Mr. Cook's astronomical studies now began to bear fruit, and he received in 1768 his commission as lieutenant and the command of an expedition to the South Seas to observe the transit of Venus. With this and other ends in view, Cook, now forty-one, left England in the Endeavour, accompanied by the great botanist, Joseph Banks, and other men of science.
The narrative of the voyages of this famous circumnavigator is so easily accessible to all who care to follow "our rough island story," that there is no need to epitomise it here. It is sufficient to say that Cook disproved all which had been previously held proved with regard to the "polar continent," and in so doing came into direct and notable relation with the country whose history we are tracing.
It was the 6th of October, 1769, when the lookout on the Endeavour sighted the bluff of Kuri—North Island—now known as "Young Nick's Head." Supposing the land to be part of that "Terra Australis Incognita" which he had come to investigate, Cook cast anchor two days later in the Bay of Turanga, or, as he saw fit to designate it owing to the inhospitality of the natives, "Poverty Bay."
At Otaheite, where he had observed the transit of Venus, Cook had shipped a chief named Tupia, who on many occasions proved of the greatest use. He had already voyaged hundreds of miles in the great canoes of the Tahitians, and his father had been an even more intrepid sailor. It was Tupia who pointed the way to this island and that, and who, owing to the limitations of his own knowledge, related his father's experiences to Cook, assuring him that land lay still farther to the south.
It was Tupia, too, who landed with his leader on the shore at Turanga, and addressed the natives in Tahitian, a language which proved sufficiently like their own to enable them to understand most of what was said.