Old-School
p. 84 · Read in the full issue
Pacific Adventure
The more I read books like The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of HMS Blossom 1825-1828, the more I am convinced that the education system of 100 to 200 years ago must have been far in advance of that which passes for education nowadays.
Certainly, it was not spread so thinly over so many, but it seems to me that today education is no longer the stimulus to living that it was then, no longer gives men that indi vidual incentive which makes them en quiring, interested in what is around them for the sake of being interested, the master of many skills, masters of the art of living, and all of it not for the mere sake of income. People like Matthew Flinders, William McGregor, Richard Burton of Africa, Captain James Cook, and now Lieutenant George Peard of HMS Blossom.
Peard’s journal of the voyage of Captain Frederick William Beechey RN and HMS Blossom to the Pacific and Arctic in 1825-8 is a lucid ac count of one of the most com prehensive British naval voyages to the Pacific. The Blossom made her way via Cape Horn to the Pacific, called at various places within the Pacific rim, and searched in vain for the expedition of Captain William Edward Parry and John Franklin expected at Baring Strait. George Peard, first lieutenant of the Blossom gives detailed descriptions of the places visited and the inhabitants, among them Pitcairn and the Gambier, Tahitian and Hawaiian Groups. No less valuable are his accounts of Kamchatka, California, the Northwestern extremity of North America, and various parts of South America.
It is interesting to read of the attitude of mind of some Pacific inhabitants which took a 100 years and more to change: Peard writes: “It is complained of by the English and American residents that these gentlemen (Christian Teachers) who have been sent here by the United States Missionary Society, by com pelling the attendance of grown persons at their schools, take up time that would be better employed in cultivating the ground or in learning arts and manufactures, and thus encourage the habit of Idleness prejudicial to the Interest of the country . , .”—Peter Livingston.
(To The Pacific And Arctic With
BEECHEY. Edited by Barry M. Gough.
Cambridge University Press. Boutley House, 200 Enston Road, London. $A11.00.)