Description
This reprinting of selections from Cook’s journals, edited by A. Grenfell Price, celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of his explorations.
It abounds in descriptions of newly discovered plant species, particulars of coastline and land features, details of navigation, and impressions of the various Pacific peoples he encountered. Cook was a many-faceted genius, able at once to grasp the complexities of mathematics necessary for navigation and mapping and the subtle intricacies of politics and negotiation.
He often recorded his keen judgments of both subordinates and native chieftains and priests in a way that displays his own great spirit and humanity. Always solicitous of the health of his crewmen, he took great pains to insure proper diet and conditions of cleanliness, and he carefully described these measures in his journal.
His tragic death at the hands of Hawaiian islanders is fully rendered from eyewitness accounts, and the implications of his discoveries to the expansion of scientific knowledge are clearly presented by the editor.
Although Cook’s journals will prove of inestimable value to historians, anthropologists, and students of the history of science, they can be enjoyed equally as lively narratives of high adventure and discovery. Any sympathetically roving imagination will take unbounded delight in this great classic of exploration by a most “curious and restless son of Earth.”
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