Master Mariner: Capt. James Cook and the Peoples of the Pacific.

p. 51: On all three voyages, Cook carried with him the Earl of Morton’s Hints offered to the consideration of Captain Cook…on what to make note of when encountering new nations. Religion, morals, order, government, distinctions of power, police and tokens for commerce were prominent subjects for inquiry. [Footnote on p. 162 identifies this as: Douglas, James, 14th Earl of Morton. Hints Offered to the Consideration of Captain Cooke, Mr Banke, Doctor Solander and the other Gentlemen who go upon the Expedition on Board the Endeavour. Manuscript. Commonwealth National Library, Canberra, dated Chiswick Wednesday 10th August 1768.]

p. 105-6, at Prince William Sound [Nootka on Third Voyage] and its natives: He became keen to identify which race these people belonged to. He had a copy of The History of Greenland, an illustrated book containing ‘a Description of the Country and its Inhabitants’ written by a Moravian missionary, David Crantz, and published in 1767. Book in hand, Cook compared the Greenland ‘Esquimaux’ with the inhabitants of Prince William Sound. In every respect—in appearance, dress and technology—the two peoples were convincingly comparable, but Cook, meticulous and thorough in deciding when there was sufficient evidence to prove a point, reserved judgement. ‘These people are not of the same Nation as those who Inhabit King Georges Sound [Nootka Sound]…, both their language and features are widely different….These are small of stature, but thick set good looking people and from Crantz’s description of the Greenlander, seem to bear some affinity to them….’

p. 115: A kind of bartering commenced and, as it did, Cook carefully scrutinized the strangers’ possessions. Using David Cranz’s book combined with his own observations of the Americans and his copy of Muhler’s Voyages from Asia and America (1761), which included Vitus Bering’s description of the Chuckchi, Cook made detailed comparisons but was forced to suspend judgment: ‘This land we supposed to be a part of the island of Alaschka laid down in Mr. Staehlins Map before quoted though from the figure of the Coast, the situation of the opposite coast of America and the longitude it appeared rather more probable to be the Country of the Tchuktschians explored by Behring in 1728. But to have admitted this at first sight I must have concluded Mr. Staehlins Map and account to be either exceeding erroneous even in latitude or else a mere fiction, a Senteance I had no right to pass upon it without farther proof.’ [There is much in this book on the unreliability of the Staehlin Map, which consistently misled Cook.]