James Cook, Philip Edwards (editor), J. C. Beaglehole (editor) · 1768–1779 (written); Penguin selection 1999/2003 · EPUB · Calibre ID 4840
Resurfaced in The Log Breaks Off at the Morai (2026-10-07).
Role in the triad
Primary source / shared ground: the text that stops at the morai and stages the quarterdeck proof
Why this book
Both anthropologists argue over this archive. Cook’s own text never names Lono and breaks off on 17 Jan 1779 as he is led to the morai; on 23 Nov 1773 it records the experiment Obeyesekere reads as staged proof. Edwards’s Postscript adds a third, practical reading.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- ‘as soon as we landed Touahah took me by the hand and conducted me to a large Morai, the other gentlemen with Parea and four or five more of the Natives followed.’ (Third Voyage, 17 Jan 1779, last entry)
- ‘hundreds were swiming about the Ships like shoals of fish.’ (17 Jan 1779)
- ‘Not a man had with him a Weapon of any sort, Trade and curiosity alone brought them off.’ (16 Jan 1779)
- ‘being desireous of being an eye wittness to a fact which many people had their doubts about, I concealed my indignation and ordered a piece of the flesh to be broiled’ (Second Voyage, Tuesday 23 [Nov] 1773)
- ‘I have often been asked, after relateing all the circumstance, if I had actualy seen them eat human flesh my self’ (23 [Nov] 1773)
- ‘Whatever else Cook wrote has not survived. His log breaks off at a moment of considerable importance’ (Edwards, Postscript)
- ‘He brought them iron, and they used it to kill him.’ (Edwards, Postscript)
Themes
archive silence · cannibalism · editor’s postscript · eyewitness · Kealakekua · morai/heiau · ship’s log