“How unbounded the influence of foreign visitors upon the ignorant inhabitants of the Pacific!  If the thousands of our countrymen who visit this ocean were actuated by the pure principles of the religion of Jesus, how immense the good they might accomplish!  But, alas! how few visitors to the Western hemisphere are actuated by such principles.”

This is preparatory to the condemnation of Cook in these terms:  “Captain Cook allowed himself to be worshipped as a god.  The people of Kealakeakua declined trading with him, and loaded his ship freely with the best productions of the island.  The priests approached him in a crouching attitude, uttering prayers, and exhibiting all the formalities of worship.  After approaching him with prostration the priests cast their red kapas over his shoulders and then receding a little, they presented hogs and a variety of other offerings, with long addresses rapidly enunciated, which were a repetition of their prayers and religious homage.

“When he went on shore most of the people fled for fear of him, and others bowed down before him, with solemn reverence.  He was conducted to the house of the gods, and into the sacred enclosure, and received there the highest homage.  In view of this fact, and of the death of Captain Cook, which speedily ensued, who can fail being admonished to give to God at all times, and even among barbarous tribes, the glory which is his due?  Captain Cook might have directed the rude and ignorant natives to the great Jehovah, instead of receiving divine homage himself.

“Kalaniopuu, the king, arrived from Maui on the 24th of January, and immediately laid a tabu on the canoes, which prevented the women from visiting the ship, and consequently the men came on shore in great numbers, gratifying their infamous purposes in exchange for pieces of iron and small looking-glasses.  Some of the women washed the coating from the back of the glasses much to their regret, when they found that the reflecting property was thus destroyed.

“The king, on his arrival, as well as the people, treated Captain Cook with much kindness, gave him feather cloaks and fly brushes and paid him divine honors.  This adoration, it is painful to relate, was received without remonstrance.  I shall speak here somewhat minutely of the death of Captain Cook, as it develops some traits of the heathen character, and the influence under which the heathen suffer from foreign intercourse.”

After setting forth the horrible character of the natives, Captain Cook is condemned and denounced because he did not refuse the homage of the ferocious savages, paid him as a superior creature.  One of Cook’s troubles was the frantic passion the islanders had to steal iron.  The common people were the property of the chiefs, and they had no other sense of possession.  They gave away what they had, but took what they wanted.

Mr. Dibble shows his animus when he charges that Cook did not give the natives the real value of their hogs and fruit, and also that he had no right to stop pilferers in canoes by declaring and enforcing a blockade.  This is a trifling technicality much insisted upon.  Dibble’s account of the death of Cook is this: