KTJNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 57. N:0 4. 5 



any certain land, but merely "distant lands" in general, and, secondly, that the stories 

 of the long voyages of the natives in historical times seem extremely doubtful. 1 



Although, therefore, the evidences that Hawaii in Cook's time was known by inha- 

 bitants of other Polynesian Islands are somewhat weak, it has nevertheless been asserted 

 that Cook, when he left Tahiti, followed some information he obtained there, and that 

 when in his course towards the north he came upon the previously unknown Islands, 

 this did not involve any real surprise for him. 2 



Nor can this supposition ha ve any justification except under the assumption that 

 Cook deliberately kept silence about what he had learnt about his predecessors of one 

 kind or another. He himself states the extreme limits of the voyages of the Tahitians, 

 as known to him, namely Lord Howe's Island in the west and Matahiwa and some others 

 of the Paumotu Islands in the north-east, 3 and further he says expressly that, before he 

 sailed away from the Society Islands, he omitted no opportunity of obtaining information 

 from the natives as to whether there were any islands in a northerly or north-westerly 

 direction; "but", he adds, "I did not find that they knew of any". 4 



The reason why Cook steered the course that unexpectedly led him to the new 

 discovery, appears unmistakably from the plan for his voyage and its object, as it was 

 put before him in the Instructions issued by the British Admiralty. He was to seek for 

 a northerly route from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, in other words to investigate 

 the so-called North-West Passage in the direction opposite to that which had previously 

 been tried, through Hudson's Bay and Baffin's Bay. 



As the nearest starting-point for this enterprise he was to use Tahiti, an island 

 whose resources were well known to him from two previous visits there. From there 

 he was to steer as direct as possible to the coast of America at 45° N. lat. and thereafter 

 to continue the work of discovery by going further along this hitherto unknown coast- 

 line in a northerly direction. It may seem peculiar that, as a starting-point for the 

 exploring of the northernmost parts of the Ocean, there should be chosen a place situated 

 so far to the south as Tahiti, when places less distant on both the American and the Asiatic 

 side were well known; but this is explained by the fact that there was a wish not to annoy 

 the Spaniards by disobeying their prohibition of visiting their possessions in the Pacific 

 — the Instructions specially direct attention to this point — ; and that the Japanese har- 

 bours could not come into question for the purpose did not need to be specially mentioned, 

 as Japan had long been completely closed to all Europeans except the Dutch. 



When, on 8 December 1777, Cook left Bolabola, the outermost of the Society Is- 

 lands that had previously been known to him, he ought, in order to f ollow his Instructions 

 strictly, to have steered towards the north-east, but he had to pass through the region 

 of the East trade-winds; the direction of the wind was constantly between NE. andE.; 

 he kept as near the wind as possible, but the course was on the whole west of N., some- 



1 The only authority cited by Waitz {Anthropologie der Naturvölker, Th. V: 2, Lpz. 1870, p. 24) 

 concerning journeys from Hawaii to Tahiti, namely John Turnbull, speaks — supposing that I understand him 

 aright — only of journeys undertaken after the coming of the Europeans to the Islands and on ships built by 

 them (Turnbull. Beise um die Welt, iibers. von T. F. Ehrmann, Weimar 1806, p. 203). 



2 James Jackson Jarves, History of the Haivaiian Islands, 3d ed., Honolulu 1847, p. 56 note. 



3 Op. c, II, p. 176. 

 1 Ibid., p. 180. 



