Captain Cook

In The

Antipodes

Publishers in Australia and New Zealand apparently think

there is virtually no limit, just

now, to public interest in the ex ploits of Captain James Cook.

With the 200th anniversary of Cook’s “discovery” of New Zealand and Australia coming up soon, the presses of the Antipodes are turning out an ever-swelling stream of literature on all sorts of facets of the famous explorer’s career.

Among the latest endeavours in this field are two volumes— Captain Cook in New Zealand and Captain Cook in Australia —from the enter prising New Zealand publishers, A. H. and A. W. Reed.

Second edition

Captain Cook in New Zealand is actually the second edition of a volume first published by Reeds in 1951. The other is a new publica tion.

Both are in the same format, and the object of each is to provide a full account of Cook’s adventures and discoveries in each Antipodean country, using his own words as recorded in his own journals.

The New Zealand volume is intro duced by a 12-page biography of Cook by A. W. Reed and a note on the literature on Cook’s three Pacific voyages.

As Cook visited New Zealand on each of his three voyages, there are sections devoted to each one. But the first visit, being by far the longest (October 7, 1769, to March 31, 1770) , easily merits the lion’s share of space.

The volume is illustrated by several

maps and by a couple of dozen pic tures, particularly photographs of places which Cook visited. It is also liberally sprinked with footnotes which explain, illuminate and elaborate on various points in the text.

A goodly number of the footnotes are taken from Captain W. J. L.

Wharton’s 1893 edition of Cook’s journal of his first voyage. This, here and there, is unfortunate, as more recent scholarship has sometimes advanced far beyond the confines of Wharton’s knowledge, thus making his information either erroneous, in adequate or out of date.

Captain Cook in Australia is intro duced by an eassy on the Cook manuscripts by C. R. H, Taylor, formerly chief librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Welling ton, and a 10-page article on “Early Discoveries in Australia” culled largely from Andrew Sharp’s The Dis covery of Australia. It is illustrated as in the other volume.

Captain Wharton’s name again figures prominently in the footnotes, but a clutch of present-day scientists have also been consulted to identify the birds, fish, animals and plants that Cook described.

As with New Zealand, Cook visited Australia on each of his three voyages. On the first voyage he ex plored the east coast of the con tinent northwards from Point Hicks; on the other two, he paid brief visits to Tasmania, then called Van Diemen’s Land.

Anyone wanting to know what Cook did and saw in the Antipodes (without being bothered by his mass of material on the other places he visited) will be well served by these two volumes, which are amply in dexed.

The volumes are available separately or as a boxed set.—RL.

(Captain Cook In New Zealand,

$4.95; Captain Cook In Australia,

53.95; boxed set, $8.95. A. H. and A. W.

Reed Pty. Ltd.).