The Cannibal Islands, Robert Michael Ballantyne [free books to read .txt] 📗

from the acquisition of glory. How sincerely his loss was felt and lamented by those who had so long found their general security in his skill and conduct, and every consolation under their hardships in his tenderness and humanity, it is neither necessary nor possible for me to describe, much less shall I attempt to paint the horror with which we were struck, and the universal dejection and dismay which followed so dreadful and unexpected a calamity."

In commenting on Captain Cook's services, the same gentleman says:

"Perhaps no science ever received greater additions from the labours of a single man than geography has done from those of Captain Cook. In his first voyage to the South Seas he discovered the Society Islands; determined the insularity of New Zealand, discovered the Straits which separate the two islands, and are called after his name, and made a complete survey of both. He afterwards explored the eastern coast of New Holland, hitherto unknown, to an extent of twenty-seven degrees of latitude, or upwards of two thousand miles." In succeeding years he settled the disputed point of the existence of a great southern continent traversing the ocean there between the latitudes of 40 degrees and 70 degrees in such a way as to show the impossibility of its existence, "unless near the pole, and beyond the reach of navigation." (We may be permitted, in these days of general advancement, mental and physical, to doubt whether any part of the globe is _absolutely_ "beyond the reach of navigation!") He discovered also the islands of New Caledonia and Georgia, and the Sandwich Islands; explored the western coasts of North America into the frozen regions, and ascertained the proximity of the two great continents of Asia and America. In short,-- to use the words of his biographer, which compress the nature and value of the great navigator's services into a small and easily comprehended point--"if we except the sea of Amur and the Japanese Archipelago, which still remain imperfectly known to Europeans, he has completed the hydrography of the habitable globe."

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Captain Cook has passed away, and the generation of men, with those whom he benefited and those who slew him, has gone to its account, but the coral islands remain as they were of old, resplendent with the beautiful works of God, though not, _as of old_, marred so terribly by the diabolical devices of man. "Cannibal Islands" some of them still are, without doubt, but a large proportion of them have been saved from heathen darkness by the light of God's Truth as revealed in the Holy Bible, and many thousands of islanders--including the descendants of those who slew the great Captain of the last generation--have enrolled themselves under the banner of the "Captain of our salvation," and are now, through God's mercy, clothed and in their right mind.

THE END.
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Publication Date: 07-02-2010

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