IOTKODUCTION. -Xl 



entire absence of any correct list of species in the accounts of the older writers are 

 much to be deplored. By the early voyagers the importance of exact information was 

 unfortunately little appreciated. 



The following account of the discovery of the islands, and of their visitors down to 

 the year 1891, is from the pen of Professor Newton, who wrote in ' Nature ' 1 after the 

 appearance of the second part of the present work, and has now most kindly allowed the 

 authors not only to utilize the greater part as originally published, but has, moreover, 

 furnished several further particulars, where information of a later date made modifica- 

 tions or additions desirable : — 



" The Sandwich Isles have not been fortunate in their Natural Historians, though 

 perhaps no worse off in this respect than many another group ' lying in dark purple 

 spheres of sea.' Discovered in 1778 by Cook, during the last of his celebrated 

 voyages, his ships communicated with one of the more western islands — Atooi, as 

 its name sounded to him and his companions, but since, and doubtless more correctly, 

 written, Kauai. The admiration of the visitors was excited by the cloaks and helmets 

 of the natives, beautifully bedecked with feathers, the more or less moth-eaten remains 

 of which may yet be seen in many a museum ; and the scarlet birds which furnished 

 the most brilliant adornment of these ingenious works of art were duly mentioned by 

 Cook in his journal as published. After less than a fortnight's stay, in the course of 

 which the existence of five islands was made out, his ships stood off to the northward to 

 prosecute their voyage of discovery. Towards the end of the year they returned, and Cook, 

 having had experience of the hospitable treatment of the islanders, designed to make 

 his winter-quarters in the Sandwich Isles, as he had named them, after the then 

 First Lord of the Admiralty ; but, keeping more to windward, the first land he made 

 was the most eastern of the group, one that he had not even seen on his first visit. 

 This was the historic Owhyhee — nowadays written Hawaii — which, being the largest 

 of them, and that which eventually produced the warrior-king and statesman who 

 eventually subdued all the rest, has given its official name to the Archipelago. 



" Though Owhyhee was sighted on November 29, Cook's course along its eastern and 

 southern coast was so deliberate that it was not till January 17, 1779, that he found a 

 safe anchorage, and that in Kealeakakua Bay, on its western side. What passed there 

 during the next three weeks need not be here recorded ; but those who know how to 

 read his narrative and the accounts since divulged from native sources will admit that 

 it throws an important and yet most lurid light on the history of superstition. To the 

 unprejudiced it must be doubtful whether even now the whole truth is, or ever can be, 

 known. The ships sailed on February 4 ; but in making her way to the northward 

 the ' Eesolution ' sprung her mainmast, and within a week returned to her old 

 anchorage. Three days later occurred the terrible tragedy which deprived the world 

 of one of its greatest seamen. 



" A week after Cook's death the ships sailed to the westward, touching at some of 



1 Vol. xiv. pp. 465 et seqq. (March 17th, 1892). 



