HIS CHARACTER. 185 



narrative, we shall find that they were the 

 aggressors, that the islanders acted only on the 

 defensive, and that Cook s fate, however lament 

 able, was not entirely undeserved. 



John Reinhold Forster, in his preface to a 

 journal of a voyage of discovery to the South 

 Sea, in the years 1776 to 1780, gives an 

 extract from a letter written to him by an 

 Englishman in a responsible situation, in which 

 he says of Cook u The Captain s character 

 is not the same now as formerly : his head 

 seems to have been turned.&quot;&quot; Forster gives the 

 same account concerning the change in Cook, 

 when he says 



&quot; Cook, on his first voyage, had with him 

 Messrs. Banks and Solander, both lovers of art 

 and science. On the second, I and my son 

 were his companions, enjoying daily and fami 

 liar intercourse with him. In our presence, 

 respect for his own character restrained him; 

 our mode of thinking, our principles and man 

 ners influenced his, and prevented his treating 

 the poor harmless South Sea Islanders with 

 cruelty. The only instance of undue severity 

 we ever witnessed in his behaviour, was when 



