A Cook’s Tour Of Tahiti,

Australia And Antarctica

Australian author Alan Moorehead, whose vivid narrative style and flair for story-telling have made him widely known for his histories of such diverse subjects as the Battle of Galli poli, the Russian Revolution and the exploration of the River Nile, has turned his attention to the South Pacific for his latest book, The Fatal Impact.

According to its subtitle, The Fatal Impact is “an account of the invasion of the South Pacific” by Europeans between 1767 and 1840. But it is, in fact, an account af that invasion in only three sample territories, Tahiti, Australia and Antarctica, and the consequent destruction there, respectively, of the Did Tahitian way of life, the Aus ;ralian and Tasmanian aborigines, ind the whales, seals and sea elephants.

Moorehead sees this destruction as ligh tragedy; and he begins his account of it in each territory with ong summaries of what Captain A)ok and his fellow voyagers did md saw there in 1769-70 and 1772-75.

“I have naturally followed Cap ain James Cook on his Pacific voyages,” the author says, “since learly everywhere he was the first m the scene, and he seems to have inderstood, better than any other ;xplorer, what was happening at hat special moment and what the :onsequences were going to be.”

In the case of Australia and the Antarctic, the author’s procedure is air enough in that Cook’s explora ion of those territories did represent the fatal impact” from which sub equent events flowed.

Misleading, Lopsided

It was not so in the case of Tahiti, the author himself says (p. 9), 'ook would not have gone to Tahiti o observe the transit of Venus if Captain Samuel Wallis had not eported his discovery in 1767 if that “hospitable refuge” at a most onvenient time.

As Wallis spent five weeks in Tahiti and introduced the Tahitians o such things as firearms, nails and ther ironware, scurvy-stricken sailors nd possibly venereal disease, he leserves much more space in The 7 atal Impact than the fleeting re erences Moorehead gives him. So oes Bougainville who visited Tahiti year later.

Thus, Moorehead’s section on Tahiti—a total of 93 pages, in a book of 230—presents a somewhat misleading picture. The section is also completely lopsided in that nearly 70 pages are devoted almost exclusively to what Cook did and saw there, leaving only 23 pages to tell the story of what happened up to the year 1840.

The result is that those remaining 23 pages are such a dizzying pot pourri of Tahitian history over the next 60 years that the author some times bamboozles even himself.

He speaks, for example, of beach combers hanging about the native settlements until their money or their credit gave out, when, in fact, a

money economy was still many years from being established in Tahiti.

He speaks of Robert Smirke’s famous picture of the cession of land at Matavai to the first mis sionaries in 1797 as showing “what a change can be made [in the Tahitians] by the gentle hand of religion”. At this time, however, the “gentle hand of religion” had only been seen in Tahiti for a few days, and it was nearly 20 years before it had any effect on the Tahitians.

Moorehead’s section on Australia is better balanced than the one on Tahiti. But again the author has to cover too much ground in too short a space, so that no truly satisfying picture of the European invasion of that continent emerges.

Only the final section on Antarctica really achieves what the author seems to have set out to do, and that is because the story of Antarctica is briefer and less complex than the

other two.

RL.

(THE FATAL IMPACT. Hutchinson. $3.85.)