CAPTAIN COOK AT NOOTKA SOUNDAND SOME QUESTIONS OF COLONIAL DISCOURSEbyNOEL ELIZABETH CURRIEB.A. (Hons.), The University of British Columbia, 1987M.A., Carleton University, 1988A THESIS SUBMITFED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYinTHE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES(Department of English)We accept this thesis as conformingjothe required standarTHE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIASeptember 1994ØNoel Elizabeth Currie, 1994In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of therequirements for an advanced degree at the University of BritishColumbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely availablefor reference and study. I further agree that permission forextensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes xna begranted by the head of my department or by his or ‘)herrepresentatives. It is understood that copying or publicatior ofthis thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without\iywritten permission.(SDepartment of__________________The University of British ColumbiaVancouver, CanadaIl (01 jCO)Date t4 1’’JJ ‘11ABSTRACTThis dissertation examines the workings of various colonial discourses in the texts of Captain JamesCook’s third Pacific voyage. Specifically, it focusses on the month spent at Nootka Sound (on the west coastof Vancouver Island) in 1778. The textual discrepancies between the official 1784 edition by Bishop Douglas,A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and J.C. Beaglehole’ s scholarly edition of 1967, The Voyage of the Resolutionand Discovery 1776-1780, reveal that Cook’s Voyages present not an archive of European scientific andhistorical knowledge about the new world but the deployment of colonial discourses. Examining this relativelyspecific moment as discourse expands a critical sense of the importance of Cook’s Voyages as culturaldocuments, for the twentieth century as well as for the eighteenth.Chapters One and Two consider the mutually interdependent discourses of aesthetics and science:based upon assumptions of “objectivity,’ they distance the observing subject from the object observed, in timeas well as in space. Chapter Three traces the development of the trope of cannibalism and argues that thistrope works in the editions of Cook’s third voyage to further distance the Nootka from Europeans by textuallyestablishing what looked like savagery. Chapter Four examines the historical construction of Cook as imperialculture hero, for eighteenth-century England, Western Europe, and the settler cultures that followed in his wake.Taken separately and together, these colonial discourses are employed in the accounts of Cook’s month atNootka Sound to justify and rationalise England’s claim to appropriation of the territory.The purpose of these colonial discourses is to fix meaning and to present themselves as natural; thepurpose of my dissertation is to disrupt such constructions. I therefore disrupt my own discourse with a seriesof digressions, signalled by a different typeface. They allow me to pursue lines of thought related tangentiallyto the main arguments and thus to investigate the wider concerns of the culture that produced Cook’s voyages,They also give me the opportunity to interrogate my own critical methodology and assumptions. UltimatelyI aim not to create another, more convincing construction of Cook and his month at Nootka Sound, but toilluminate a cultural process, a way of making meaning that is part of his intellectual legacy.111TABLE OF CONTENTSAbstract 11Table of contents iiiList of Figures ivAcknowledgement viiiNTRODUCTION 1Chapter One Approaching the Northwest Coast:Art, Exploration, and Cook’s Third Voyage 36Chapter Two Science and Ethnography:The Field of Vision 88Chapter Three Cook and the Cannibals:Nootka Sound, 1778 141Chapter Four and Conclusion The Aftermath189Postscript233Notes244Bibliography251ivLIST OF FIGURESFIGURE1.1 O,nai, portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reproduced from Bernard Smith, European 45Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), plate63, p. 80.1.2 Tu, red chalk drawing by William Hodges. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision 46and the South Pac(fic, 63, p. 74.1.3 Otoo King of 0-Taheite Drawn from Nature by W. Hodges, engraving by 3. Hall. 46Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pac(fic, plate 60, p. 74.1.4 Omai, panel by William Hodges. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the 50South Pacific, plate 12, p. 96.1.5 Portrait of Tu, by John Webber. Reproduced from Rudiger Joppien and Bernard 51Smith, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery, 1770-1 780 (Melbourne: OxfordUniversity Press, 1987), plate 69, p. 61.1.6 A few of the natives brandished spears, by Will Robinson. Reproduced from Bernard 53Smith, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (New Haven, Conn.and London: Yale University Press, 1992), plate 55, p. 62.1.7 The Harbour of Annamooka, by John Webber. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 25, 60p. 28.1.8 The Resolution and Discovery in Ship Cove, by John Webber. Reproduced from 60Maria Tippett and Douglas Cole, From Desolation to Splendour: ChangingPerceptions of the British Columbia Landscape (Toronto and Vancouver: Clerke,Irwin, & Co., 1977), p. 19.1.9 A Night Dance by Men, in Happaee and A Night Dance by Women, in Happaee, 61engraving after Webber by W. Sharp. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision andthe South Pacific, plates 16 and 17, p. 128.1.10 The Marquis of Granby Relieving a Sick Soldier, by Edward Penny. Reproduced 64from Solkin, “Portraiture in Motion” (Huntington Library Quarterly 14.1 [Winter19861), fig. 1, p. 4.1.11 The Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West. Reproduced from Helmut von Erffa 66and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, Conn. and London:Yale University Press, 1986), p. 58.1.12 Butcher Bird caught at sea, and other drawings, by William Ellis. Reproduced from 69Joppien, plate 204, p. 209.1.13 The Fan Palm, in the Island of Cracatoa, coloured aqautint by John Webber. 70Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, plate 74, p. 111.VFIGURE1.14 A View of Ship Cove in King George’s Sound on the N. W. Coast of America, by 71William Ellis. Reproduced from Tippett, p. 19.1.15 A View up the Valley. . . from Matavai-Bay, by William Ellis. Reproduced from 79Joppien, plate 71, p. 62.1.16 A View of Christmas Harbour, by John Webber. Reproduced from Joppien, plate 2, 85p.4.2.1 The classes of Linnaeus’ sexual system of classification, as illustrated in Ehret’s 101original plate, 1736 (much reduced). Reproduced from W.T. Steam, SpeciesPlanatarum: A Facsimile of the First Edition, 2 vols. (London: Ray Society, 1957),vol. 1, pp. 28-9.2.2 Tableau des découvertes du Capne Cook et de Ia Perouse, hand-coloured etching by 103St.-Sauveur. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, colour- plate 17, pp. 157-7.2.3 The Method of Charles Linnaeus, the Swede.... Reproduced from Steam, Species 109Planatarum, vol. 2., pp. 75-80.2.4 Mercator Projection, showing distortion of areas away from the Equator. Reproduced 113from Porter W. McDonnell, Jr., Introduction to Map Projections, (New York andBasel: Marcel Dekker, 1979), fig. 6-2, p. 70.2.5 America, engraving by Jan van der Straet (Stradanus) (c. 1600). Reproduced from 123Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1 797(New York: Methuen, 1986), fig. 1, p. xii.2.6 A Man of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, c. 1781-3. Reproduced from Joppien, 129plate 114, p. 96.2.7 A Woman of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, c. 178 1-3. Reproduced from Joppien, 130plate 112, p. 94.2.8 A Naiive prepared for Hunting, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from 132Joppien, plate Ill, p. 93.2.9 A Woman ofNootka Sound, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien, 133plate 113, p. 95.2.10 A Man of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien, 134plate 115, p. 97.3.1 Captain Cook in Ship Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound, by John Webber. Reproduced 144from Joppien, plate 17, p. 17.3.2 America, engraving by Cornelius Visscher. Reproduced from Smith, Imagining the 185PacUlc, plate 81, p. 80.viFIGURE33 Columbus’ fleet attacked by Cannibals. Reproduced from Hulme, fig. 7, p. 44. 1853.4 A Human Sacrifice at Otaheite, pen, wash, and watercolour by John Webber, c. 1777. 186Reproduced from Smith, Imagining the Pacific, plate 174, p. 191.3.5 The human butcher shop. Reproduced from Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and 186Africans,” ‘Race,’ Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago:Chicago University Press, 1986), fig. 7, p. 204.3.6 Amerindians pouring gold into the mouths of Spaniards to satisfy the visitors’ greed. 186Reproduced from Olive Dickason, The Myth of the Savage and the Beginning ofFrench Colonialism in the Americas (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1984),p. 136.4.1 An Inside View of the Natives’ Habitations, by John Webber. Reproduced from 212Joppien, plate 103, p. 86.4.2 Captain James Cook, portrait by Nathaniel Dance, 1776. Reproduced from J.C. 219Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (London: Hakluyt, 1974), frontspiece.4.3 Captain Cook Travel, advertisement, BC Tel Yellow Pages. 2224.4 Lets Have a Drink and Celebrate, poster by Stephen Nothling. Black Banana 222Posters, Brisbane, Australia, est. 1986; Right here right now portfolio, 1987.Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia.4.5 Captain Cook and His Domestic Animals. Reproduced from Ganath Obeyesekere, 225The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), figs. 9 and 10, p. 128.viiACKNOWLEDGEMENTWriting this dissertation has sometimes felt like a solitary process, but in fact I have oftenfound help in seemingly unlikely places. A friend’s chance remark at a party led me to NootkaSound, via Coast Guard helicopter, in August of 1994. For their help in arranging my trip, I amgrateful to Operations Officer Michael Gardiner and Captain F.I. Sacré of the Coast Guard FleetSystems in Vancouver, and to Vivian Skinner in Victoria. Although my trip lasted only a day, it wasa spectacular day, thanks to the help and friendliness of Supervisory Helicopter Pilot Glenn Diachukand of Kipling Hedley, now at Cannanah but formerly at Nootka Light Station, who shared hismaterials on and enthusiasm for Nootka Sound with me. After scrambling among the rocks at NootkaSound in the rain, I was grateful for the hospitality offered by Ed and Pat Kidder of Nootka LightStation. Approaching Nootka Sound from the air, I found Beaglehole’s description of the coast(“Vancouver Island is built on vast proportions: no one approaching it from the sea, or even flyingdown its coast, would take it for an island-- the scale of hills behind hills is too great, the snowymountains inland recede too far, the line of breakers is too long; the very clouds are almost tooimmense”) running through my mind, more apt than I could have imagined before “being there.”And, of course, I have often found help in more familiar places. My thinking and writinghave benefitted enormously from discussion, conversation, and feedback, for which I am grateful.While much of this feedback has been informal, the process of presenting my ideas in abbreviatedform as conference papers has indicated to me what I really think and want to say about the subjectat hand. Early drafts of two chapters have benefitted in this fashion, appearing as “Cook and theCannibals: Nootka Sound, 1778” at the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference,October 1992, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and “Approaching the Northwest Coast: Art, Exploration,and Cook’s Third Voyage” at the 1992 meeting of the Northwest Society for Eighteenth-CenturyStudies, February 1993 in Portland, Oregon. My thanks go to Wilson Durward for his comments onwhat is now a more readable introduction. Above all, I am grateful for the supervisory process: ithas provided my work with criticism which has been constructive always, teaching me how to goabout writing a dissertation. The comments of committee members Professor Eva-Marie Kröller andProfessor Laurie Ricou have gone a long way towards clarifying the structure of the dissertation aswell as the arguments. In particular, my research supervisor, Professor W.H. New, has provided anatmostphere of intellectual challenge and encouragement-- sometimes alternately, sometimessimultaneously, but always at exactly the right time.IIntroductionNootka Sound in 1778: Terra IncognitaWe no sooner drew near the inlet than we found the coast to be inhabited; and atthe place where we were first becalmed, three canoes came off to the ship. In one ofthese were two men, in another six, and in the third ten. Having come pretty near us,a person in one of the two last stood up, and made a long harangue, inviting us toland, as we guessed, by his gestures. At the same time, he kept strewing handfuls offeathers toward us; and some of his companions threw handfuls of a red dust orpowder in the same manner. The person who played the orator, wore the skin of someanimal, and held, in each hand, something which rattled as he kept shaking it. Aftertiring himself with his repeated exhortations, of which we did not understand a word,he was quiet; and then others took it, by turns, to say something, though they actedtheir part neither so long, nor with such vehemence as the other. (Douglas II, 265-6)So begins the first published edition of Captain James Cook’s encounter with the people of the placehe “honour’d. . . with the name of King Georges Sound [which] is called by the Natives Nook’ka”(King 1401). The Resolution and the Discovery stayed at Nootka Sound from Sunday 29 March toSunday 26 April 1778 on Cook’s third and last voyage, this one in search of, among other things, theelusive Northwest Passage. To the contemporary reading public, the encounter with Nootka Soundwas largely overshadowed by the foreknowledge of Cook’s death at Hawaii less than a year later.Although the northwest coast of America was exotically different from the South Pacific, it could nothope to compete with the high drama to come at Hawaii. Standard landfall activities at NootkaSound -- where the expedition replenished its supply of much-needed water, made necessary repairsto the ships, relieved its sexual frustrations, and traded with the natives -- seemed prosaic andmundane. The consequences of this month at Nootka Sound, however, have been far-reaching:Cook’s account profoundly influenced his European contemporaries, as well as the colonial andimperial cultures which followed in his wake.Cook’s month at Nootka Sound did not result in the kind of violence that caused his deathin Hawaii the following January. In fact, it might seem to exemplify the cultural construction of2Cook as a benevolent -- enlightened even -- explorer whose voyages expanded the horizons of globalknowledge: the “contact” model of European relations with the new world. Greg Dening’s descriptionof sixteenth-century Spanish mariners’ sentiments regarding their violent encounter with MarquesasIslanders illustrates the antithetical construction: the “conquest” model whose goal was the destructionof difference instead of its archival preservation.It did not matter that many of these Spanish colonists on their way to found the NewJerusalem had come from brothels and gaols. They had the touch of the divine withinthem. They might lose their souls in hell for murder, fornication and blasphemy,indeed would do so one presumes before this voyage to their new Jerusalem was over,but they had an eye to insurance in these matters and the friars could remedy the evilin them with an absolution and even -- though here the odds grew longer-- a lastblessing. It was their status in God’s eyes that made them different from the heathen.They might go to hell as good marksmen, but they went with the sign on their soulsthat they had once been saved. The heathen went willy-filly. (Dening, Islands andBeaches 10)The contrast between scientists gathering information about the physical world and marksmencounting the heads of slain natives seems clear, yet in both cases what speaks is the Europeanhistorical record: present-day Nootka Sound, like the Marquesas Islands, is so known as a result ofEuropean naming. Despite the fact that one group instigated the encounter and eventually came tocontrol it, the encounter itself happened between two groups and thus may be viewed from twoperspectives at least. Since it is the winners’ privilege to write the history books, such moments ofcontact bring indigenous peoples ‘into’ the discursive field of European history (a way ofunderstanding events, people, and places in time which exists simultaneously in writing and remainsindependent of it). European discourses such as those of Christianity (whether Catholic or Protestant)and linear history construct a space in which even such relatively neutral terms as “contact,” no lessthan “discourse,” need careful definition. Even before Darwin and nineteenth-century evolutionarytheory, Europeans defined the moment of contact -- when they actually acknowledged the humanityof those encountered -- as if it occurred between themselves in the present tense and some version3of their own past. As Dennis Porter notes,From Captain Cook to Levi-Strauss, the traveler reports on the sensation of comingface to face in a remote place with the apparent past of the human race in itspristineness or menace. For pre-twentieth-century Europeans, the shock of suchencounters with naked or semi-naked peoples of color seems to reside in theperception of similarity within radical difference. Although the human past may havebeen deliberately sought out as part of their quest for origin, it often returns in a waythat nothing in their culture had quite prepared them for. (Haunted Journeys 12-3)In fact, Europeans were not encountering the human past but another human present, one radicallydifferent from their own -- a distinction that is difficult to grasp in the overdetermined vocabulary ofEuropean contact with the new world.The moment of contact brings so-called prehistoric peoples (“of, belonging to, or existing inthe period antecedent to history, or to the first historical accounts of a people” [“Prehistoric”]) intohistory (“the narrative of past events”; furthermore, “a written narrative, constituting a continuousmethodical record, in order of time, of important or public events” [“History” 261]). By definition,their very existence is simultaneously confirmed and denied: the paradox of absence and presence.That is to say, European history describes the new-world territory as uninhabited, “virgin land” therefor the claiming by the representative of the European crown, even as encounters with the inhabitantsgive psychological and physical impetus to the narrative. Such encounters -- ranging from sightingsof, to bloody conflicts with, natives -- propel the narrative by means of the fear andlor excitementthey generate in Europeans: fear of attack, often of cannibalism, and excitement about guidance anddirection toward the goal of exploration. (For example, contrary to the trope of the discovery of anempty land which can be named and thereby possessed, Cook’s first words about Nootka Soundindicate a recognition that the land is not, in fact, empty, just as they seem to indicate that itsinhabitants have a culture -- though not necessarily a civilisation -- he does not understand.) Theexpansionist imperative may lead to the revision of history (or of the moment of encounter, when the4explorer’s journal is edited for publication): a retroactive assertion that the land was empty at themoment of contact. This assertion may also be a function of perception in the present (at the momentof European encounter with the new world, either on its shores or between the pages of a book): a(European) way of seeing which consists precisely of not seeing that which is alien to it. In Mapsand Dreams, Hugh Brody identifies the necessity of denying the existence of aboriginal inhabitantsof new-world territories: “in the empire of the immigrant, new lands must be thought of as empty,and every human being as an equal newcomer -- equal before the absence of law. Or, where thereis law, it exists in the imperious fiats of the newcomers,” whose claim to imprint their law on anempty land is thereby justified (xiii). Bruce Greenfield presents “one line of American criticaldiscourse” about nineteenth-century American responses to the land; his analysis of the rhetoric ofuninhabited space or virgin territory supports Brody’ s point (10).In his introduction to Narrating Discovery, Greenfield sketches the issues of ownership orappropriation of territory as they are played out in Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales. He argues thatthe generic differences between Cooper’s highly-controlled fictions, which present a “panoramichistorical vision,” and discovery and exploration narratives, whose point of view is necessarily“limited to that of an individual immediately engaged in circumstances he does not entirelyunderstand or control,” is one of content rather than of form (9, 10):in writing accounts of exploratory journeys, European travelers needed to address thesame problem of authority that structured Cooper’s fictions, the authority, that is,according to which the European or Euro-American lays claim to what is by genericdefinition alien territory. And discovery narratives do, as a matter of course, construeEuropean action in America as being in conflict with existing peoples, even though,over the years, they developed rhetorical strategies for mitigating and marginalizingthis conflict (since the late seventeenth century, they have presented themselves asscientific discourses). It now seems commonsensical to include the discovery narrativein the realm of what Peter Hulme (among others) has defined as ‘colonial discourse’:‘an ensemble of linguistically-based practices unified by their common deploymentin the management of colonial relationships.’ Reporting on an exploratory journey,especially in published form, meant casting individual activity in terms that would be5recognized and valued in European and colonial power centers. To ‘make discoveries’was to travel and observe, but it was also to participate in European expansionism.(Greenfield 10)In nineteenth-century American literature, authority-- the legitimate right to ownership of territory-- comes not from nature or law, but from language itself, from colonial discourses which create theidea of an empty space. Such discourses, which Monique Wittig calls “entourloupettes [nasty tricks,circumventing tricks],” result in violence -- first in the order of language, later in the realm ofpractical politics (“Homo Sum” 56). The rhetoric of natural science, for example, supported theappropriative project by identifying the original inhabitants primarily as natural products of the land,rather than as human products of culture and civilisation: “after America had become ‘natural,’ Euro-Americans were no longer co-habitants of a continent whose peoples they had conquered; instead,they could see the primordial land itself as the explanation and justification for their presence in it”(Greenfield 2). As a genre, the discovery and exploration narrative played a crucial role in creating,supporting, and furthering colonial discourses:it linked individual experience to corporate significance. The conditions of exotictravel dictated that individuals would be privileged as sources of knowledge; as thespokesman for, at most, a small group of Europeans who had visited an unfamiliarregion, a writer’s account had undeniable authority. Yet it was not only the widelyshared understanding that Europeans and Euro-Americans were fundamentallyconcerned with, even defined by, their global expansion that enabled the traveler toundertake his mission and to gain a public hearing when he returned. Through thewell-established conditions of the discovery narrative, individual adventurers, oftendimly if not selfishly motivated, allied themselves with the power of European andEuro-American institutions. To validate individual suffering and expense in the faceof imminent physical danger and/or social oblivion, travelers sought to transformadventures into history. (Greenfield 11)History, like natural science, provided a rhetoric by which the new world could be known andunderstood in European languages.Instead of legal or moral authority, narratives of the so-called discovery or exploration of whatis, by definition, unknown and unclaimed space create a discursive authority, which in turn legitimates6the territorial claim of the writer. The original inhabitants, “objectified” and identified with the land,become property, and consequently part of the claim. Such discursive strategies validate the presenceand expansion of settler cultures in the colonies, but that is not their only role. Greenfield argues that“the narrative of exploration that developed in conjunction with the new political authority [in hisanalysis, the newly-constituted American state] was more than the expression of the newgovernment’s pretensions: it was part of the new state’s creation of itself’ (12). The cultureproducing the exploration narratives and other forms of colonial discourse reveals in them its ownvalues and aspirations: territorial expansion at the expense of the original inhabitants. In turn, thisculture is produced by them. Colonial culture and colonial discourse thus become a kind of Möbiusstrip, where finding the beginning or end of the relationship is less important than remarking theinterdependence of, or the interrelationship between, the two elements.The popularity of the literature of discovery or exploration is inextricably linked to the successof this appropriating rhetoric and discourse: “spatial freedom became [such] a common assumptionof American culture . . . that awareness of how it was gained receded” dramatically (Greenfield 11).Narratives of travel had been popular reading material in Europe for centuries; however, theirpopularity peaked in eighteenth-century England with the journals of long ocean voyages andcircumnavigations, such as those of Cook:The highest levels of British government and scientific community participated in theplanning and support of Cook’s expeditions, making them the most prestigious of theirkind in English history. This support, together with Cook’s own remarkable talentsas a navigator and observer, the high quality of the scientific personnel whoaccompanied him, and the care and expense lavished on the reports, set Cook up asthe standard for all who followed him. His reports, particularly that of the secondvoyage, which he wrote himself, became models for anyone who undertook to publisha report of exploratory travels. (Greenfield 17)Here the focus moves from the experience of reading such accounts to the writing, to the rhetoric ordiscourse shaped by the written text -- produced, as Percy Adams notes, with “careful editing” (Travel7Literature and the Evolution of the Novel 42). Although these narratives took several forms,1 theideological and generic supports were generally the same: as Greenfield notes, the “establishedtradition” of exploration narratives “enabled obscure fur traders and junior army officers to assert theimportance of their actions; the public understanding of discovery as a central theme of Europeanhistory offered these men, and others like them, the means by which they could claim the attentionof the reading public” (18).2A sense of destiny, of the inevitability of European expansion and the progression ofEuropean civilisation, provided ideological supports essential to the creation of an explorationnarrative. This ideological apparatus also transformed the record of exploration (which usually tookthe form of a log or journal) into a narrative. A journal’s chronology does not -- often cannot -- forma narrative in and of itself. In the case of Cook’s voyages, long periods at sea provided fewobservations to record beyond comments about shipboard life, weather conditions, and navigationaldetails. Even seemingly momentous events are not necessarily related. Cook’s ‘discovery’ ofAustralia bears no intrinsic relationship to his ‘discovery’ of Nootka Sound, beyond that which canbe constructed in writing or, more properly, in discourse: “the extent to which [an explorer’s] recordcan be cast as narrative is fundamentally related to the writer’s ability to connect daily experience toconscious intentions and goals” (Greenfield 18). The explorer’s “conscious intentions and goals” --of discovering or of making known to Europeans the strange new place -- give meaning not only tothe narrative itself, but also to the very process of exploration, which is often marked by a singularlack of discoveries. In Cook’s Voyages as published texts, the expectation of discoveries to comemakes reading about months at sea worthwhile and significant; the fact of publication suggests thatthe voyages actually discovered something worth writing a book about.The explorer/writer modified the order of events recorded in his journal in light ofthe actual outcomes of the journey and his understanding of its meaning, making the8record of his observations into the story of his discoveries. Things randomly occurringand promiscuously noted are recognized as leading toward, or stemming from, arevelation. (Greenfield 19)However clearly motivated at the time, an exploration narrative’s teleology becomes most apparentin retrospect, as the writer or editor shapes random events into significant patterns. The story ofdiscovery comes to stand for the discovery itself.Greenfield defines “discovery with reference to the economic and political contexts in whichjourneys were planned and accounts written. The verb to discover thus implies anticipation, and laterknowledge, of an object that has already been defined or allowed for in the contemporary discourseabout where the traveler has been” (19-20). Exploration literature is a profoundly public discourse:“eighteenth-century explorers thought of themselves as ‘making discoveries,’ and it is with this senseof official purpose that they undertook to mount expeditions and write narrative accounts,” with theappropriate acknowledgement of official bodies (Greenfield 20). Explorers-- and the reading publicwho purchased the published accounts of their adventures-- emphasised their role as representativesof corporation, crown, or civilisation itself over any individual goals or aspirations. Paradoxically,doing so allowed them to assert their personal importance, since, Greenfield argues, “eighteenth-century imperial theory allowed the individual in the fur trade to see his efforts as contributing to thecommonwealth of the company and the nation, and in his retrospective the traveler usually soughtto express his motives in terms of service to these larger entities” (21).Travel and Exploration LiteratureA construction of Cook as imperial culture hero personifies the public discourse of eighteenthcentury English exploration. However, the eighteenth century also saw the growth of another formof English travel narrative ideologically related to the popularity and profusion of scientific travel9books: the self-conscious, often parodic, travel narrative. Works such as Laurence Sterne’ s ASentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr Yorick (1768) present the individualconsciousness rather than the external world as the object of discovery; the narrator’s revelations arepersonal. The process of English cultural self-fashioning at work in the grand enterprise of Cook’sencounters with exotic Pacific cultures is played out at the level of the individual traveler, whoderives personal benefit (in the form of a new knowledge and consciousness of himself) from histravels. The journey to a foreign part of the world thus becomes a metaphor for a journey into theunknown part of the self; the resulting discoveries enter public circulation in the published text, which(like the fur-traders’ journals discussed by Greenfield) finds an audience thanks to the demand fortravel books created by Cook’s Voyages (among others). Thus the self-conscious travel narrativeowes a debt to the public discourse of exploration narratives for a form and an audience; in itsparodic guise, it also owes a debt for comic or satiric material to previously published narratives. Asan example, Sterne’ s character “Smelfungus” in A Sentimental Journey parodies the splenetic, irasciblenarrator of Tobias Smollett’ s Travels through France and Italy (1766); indeed, the humour of thischaracter in Sterne’ s account largely depends on the reader’s familiarity with Smollett’ s book.Small wonder, perhaps, that the author of Tristram Shandy should write a travel narrativewhere self-consciousness is the hero, or even that the emergent genre of fiction (in the eighteenthcentury, often preoccupied with the “history” of an individual character) should affect other forms ofwriting. In twentieth-century examples of the genre, the spatial journey has largely become ametaphor for an inward passage: as Conrad’s phrenologist doctor in Heart of Darkness (1899) tellsMarlow, “the changes take place inside, you know” (502-3). This is particularly true for Europeanstraveling into the world of the so-called “savages” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Conrad’s image from the beginning of the century -- of the corruption at the centre of European10civilisation -- stands as the emblem for journeys which, paradoxically, carry travelers deeper intothemselves the further they go from the known or familiar world: the only possible epiphany is to befound in the process of the journey itself. However, not only is it impossible to reach the centre ofone’s own consciousness, but also, apparently, to return from it: the experience of the journey causesshifts in the starting-point as well as in the traveler. For example, the first sentences of Claude Levi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropiques suggest its function as an anti-travel book:Travel and travellers are two things I loathe -- and yet here I am, all set to tell thestory of my expeditions. But at least I’ve taken a long while to make up my mind toit: fifteen years have passed since I left Brazil for the last time and often, during thoseyears, I’ve planned to write this book, but I’ve always been held back by a sort ofshame and disgust. So much would have to be said that has no possible interest:insipid details, incidents of no significance. (17)After overcoming his repugnance enough to put this book together, he cannot even claim that it formsthe repository of the ephemeral and extra bits that were edited out of, or found no place in, hisscholarly anthropological works:It may be that we shall have spent six months of travel, privation, and sickeningphysical weariness merely in order to record -- in a few days, it may be, or even afew hours -- an unpublished myth, a new marriage-rule, or a complete list of namesof clans. But that does not justify my taking up my pen in order to rake overmemory’s trash-cans: ‘At 5.30 a.m. we dropped anchor off Recife while the seagullsskirled around us and a flotilla of small boats put out from the shore with exotic fruitsfor sale....’ (17)Instead, what he offers is an anthropology or ethnography of himself, a scientific study of the authorin his natural habitat: the densely textured, stream-of-consciousness dream-logic of his own mind, hispatterns of thought, memory, and desire. Although he sets up travel books as rhetorical straw figures,Levi-Strauss’ own text does differ from the sort he repeatedly derides -- particularly in hisunderstanding of the deployment of power, of ways of talking about and knowing the other whichcreate and maintain power imbalances. Through strategies of falsification and manipulation, LeviStrauss argues, the narrator achieves self-aggrandizement: he may ‘go Indian’ for a month or so, but11his photographs (‘the author with his pygmy friends’) confirm not the authenticity of his experienceswith natives, but the fact that he is taller than they are.Levi-Strauss also demonstrates how the Europe he left for Brazilian fieldwork no longerexists. The contrast between his earliest trips to South America -- dinners of supreme de poulardeandfilet de turbot relieving the monotony of his stateroom-- and his attempts to escape France beforethe Nazis arrived in 1941 -- “1 saw myself as marked down for a concentration camp” (25) -- revealsthat “the atmosphere thickens, everywhere” (37). There is no going back, no golden age anywhereto return to -- except through memory, which organises and offers new perspectives on both that timeand this one.Some of the concerns of Levi-Strauss’ “autoethnography,” first published in 1955, are pickedup in a similar work by another anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski’s Diary in the Strict Sense ofthe Term (1967). Dennis Porter calls this the “shadow-text” of Malinowski’s classic work ofethnography, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). In his Foreword to Argonauts, Malinowskiclaims that “one of the first conditions of acceptable Ethnographic work certainly is that it should dealwith the totality of all social, cultural and psychological aspects of the community, for they are sointerwoven that not one can be understood without taking into consideration all the others” (xvi). Heanalyses the whole of Melanesian society through the Kula, a trading system of both economic andsymbolic significance: “it looms paramount in the tribal life of these natives who live within itscircuit, and its importance is fully realised by the tribesmen themselves, whose ideas, ambitions,desires and vanities are very much bound up with the Kula” (Argonauts 2). Malinowski begins anaccount of his ethnographic methodology by discussing some of the early difficulties incommunicating with the natives and his initial feelings of discouragement and hopelessness.Fortunately, these difficulties are resolved after a few pages, culminating for him in the knowledge12that the ethnographer ought “to live without other white men, right among the natives” (Argonauts6). He immediately moves on to the detailed description, exposition, and analysis of Melanesian lifeaccording to “real scientific aims, and. . . the values and criteria of modern ethnography” (Argonauts6).In contrast to Argonauts’ rational scientific sensibility, the Diary recounts the innumerabledifficulties -- situational and emotional -- which seemingly conspire to depress the anthropologist.Indeed, this later text presents him as a melancholy, sensual man, whose thoughts are focussed onhis friends, family, and particularly his lovers in Europe and Australia. In comparison to their weightin the Diary, Malinowski’s fieldwork among the Mailu and Trobriand islanders seems almostincidental. For example:During the night Ineykoya died. Got up at 3:30 and went there. Deep impression.I lose my nerve. All my despair, after all those killed in the war, hangs over thismiserable Melanesian hut. I thought of E.R. M. [his fiancée], Jim, and Charles. Thenwent back under my mosquito net and couldn’t fall asleep and thought a great dealof E.R.M. My misgivings a propos Dostoevskian feelings. Doubts about whether sheis still the ‘complete woman’ for me -- I decide to keep them to myself. (Diary 196)This quotation reveals some of the most striking features of the Diary: the intensely personal,introspective tone, often expressing intense sexual longing (women’s initials often stand for sexualfantasies or memories), the desire to fix meanings as well as his feelings, and the steady stream-ofconsciousness dialogue with himself that flows seemingly independently of the location. Indeed, thelocation frequently seems incidental in the Diary: gathering ethnographic information seems to occupyless of Malinowski’s time that reading (European novels and magazines), eating, and talking withother Europeans -- even those he dislikes.In addition to presenting the difficulties of fieldwork conditions, and Malinowski’s self-pity,the Diary suggests how his own attitudes and emotional states shape the theoretically “objective”13ethnographic context. For example, on 6 November, 1914, Malinowski wrote:Tried to get old men together speaking Motu. Out came an old man with a pleasantexpression and clear gaze full of calm and wisdom. In the morning, collecting ofinformation proceeded well. I went back, ate on ship, and read. Around 5, went ashoreand sat by the sea in the shade. Collecting information went less well. The old manbegan to lie about burials. I became enraged, got up and went for a walk. (Diary 35)A month and a half earlier -- on 27 September -- Malinowski noted the difficulties of information-gathering, given that, he writes, “I do not speak their language . . . . although I am trying to learnMotu” (Diary 13). Arguably, his opinion that the old man is 11lying” has more to do with his ownperceptions and frustrations thai with his expertise in the Motu language. The Diary reveals againand again how Malinowski’s expressed opinions about natives depend upon his own emotional state:when he is content, secure, they are helpful and communicative; when he is frustrated with himself(over his nearly-constant sexual fantasies or the progression of his fieldwork) or feeling ill, they areliars.Porter describes Malinowski’s text and shadow text using the concept of repression to explainthe narrative voice created by the requirements of anthropology as an academic discipline (as ascience, defined by a certain authorial disinterest and/or objectivity). However, the discrepancybetween the two, and the nature of the “repressed” material, bears scrutiny. James Clifford notes that“one of the discipline’s founders was seen to have felt considerable anger toward his nativeinformants. A field experience that had set the standard for scientific cultural description was fraughtwith ambivalence” (Predicament of Culture 97). In fact, the “father of ethnography,” constructed asan “authoritative participant-observer, a locus of sympathetic understanding of the other” in the textof Argonauts, is revealed not as “coolly objective” but as subjectively racist in the private text of theDiary (Clifford, PC 110). The fact that this private diary was “clearly not intended for publication”(Clifford, PC 97) suggests Malinowski’ s own process of self-fashioning (and possibly cultural self-14fashioning as well), in which private feelings of desire and violence are edited out of the objectivesocial scientist persona.The Diary reveals that Malinowski frequently read novels instead of ethnographic worksduring his Melanesian fieldwork. The effect of this reading material on the form and structure ofArgonauts is unclear; however, at one moment, Malinowski’ s frustration with getting the informationhe wants from Mailu islanders finds voice through another travel experience shaped in English by anexpatriate Pole, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899):I handed out half-sticks of tobacco, then watched a few dances; then took pictures --but results very poor. Not enough light for snapshots; and they would not pose longenough for time exposures. -- At moments I was furious with them, particularlybecause after I gave them their portions of tobacco they all went away. On the wholemy feelings toward the natives are decidedly tending to ‘Exterminate the brutes.’(Diary 69)Clifford’s description of this extraordinary statement as “an ironic invocation [which] provides[Malinowski] with a fictional grasp of the stresses of fieldwork and the violence of his feelings,” partof “the inseparability of discourse and power” forcing the anthropologist to “struggle for control inthe ethnographic encounter” fails to account for the significance of such a violent desire in thecolonial context (PC 105). That the representative of colonial power can express such a desiredemonstrates the military, economic, and personal extent of that colonial power: that such a wish issayable, even thinkable, reveals the balance of power for which the writer theoretically struggles.Porter’s account of Malinowski’ s racism seems more satisfactory to me: “the variousreferences to ‘niggers’ in connection with Mailu and Trobrianders shock all the more because theycome from the author of Argonauts. Even if the word did not in his time have all the pejorativeconnotations it has today, the context makes clear the racist hostility involved” (HJ 261), especiallysince it always appears in italics with a lower-case “n.’ Almost always, it carries a sense of sneering:15“Somewhat resentful feelings about E.R.M. -- In the afternoon read her diary. Posed before theniggers” (Diary 197). Again, it is the discrepancy between a reader’s expectations of so-calledscientific objectivity -- largely constructed for anthropological discourse by Malinowski’s Argonauts-- and the violence of the Diary’s racism that shocks, not inviting but forcing the reader “to read thecanonical text against the grain” (Porter, HJ 251). At the same time, both Porter and Clifford arguethat the two texts taken together do not constitute the “whole truth” of Malinowski’s Trobriandfieldwork experience any more than either text does so singly:the two texts are partial refractions, specific experiments with writing . . . . [TheDiary] is a crucial document for the history of anthropology, not because it revealsthe reality of ethnographic experience, but because it forces us to grapple with thecomplexities of such encounters and to treat all textual accounts based on fieldworkas partial constructions. (Clifford, PC 97)A Digression, concerning DigressionsMy own discourse is disrupted throughout the dissertation by means of digressions.Signalled by a heading which identifies them as such and a different typeface, theyforegroundthe eighteenth-century focus of this study, and the place of Cook’s voyages as texts ineighteenth-century philosophical, cultural, and literary contexts as well as twentieth-centurypost-colonial ones. The ultimate example of digressive writing, for the eighteenth or possiblyany other century, is of course Sterne’s Tristram Shandt (1759-67). From the very firstchapter, when Mrs. Shandy’s degression from the care and thought properly attendant uponthe moment of conception affects his future and his nature, Tristram (and his life and opinionsas expressed in the novel) is marked by digressions: his own hobby-horses, those of his father,and of course Uncle Toby’s fortifications. Paradoxically, these hobby horses both signal aformal digression and alsofunction as markers, touchstonesfor the reader in a narrative whichconstantly circles around on and turns in on itself The bees in Walter Shandy’s bonnet about16midwifery reveal as much about Tristram as his own fear of death and meditations uponmortality: all the digressions in Tristram Shandy, formal and informal, provide crucialinformation for the reader. Tristram Shandy may be the most extreme example, but not theonly one in eighteenth-century literature. The novelty of the novel form, and the attempts ofeighteenth-century writers to capture an individual character’s consciousness and thought-processes (Defoe’s Moll Flanders 11722], Richardson’s Pamela 11740-2]) and experience (worksin the picaresque mode such as Fielding’s Tom Tones 117491 or Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker117711) often results in a narrative which reads like one long digression.My digressions, like the less formal ones of the eighteenth-century novel, provideadditional information, supplementing the main argument and allowing me to follow aninterest or another train of thought concurrently. In these cases the juxtaposition of the maintext and the digressions fleshes out some aspect of a chapter’s line of enquiry --for example,the connection between English landscape gardens or European engraving conventions andexplorers’ aesthetic responses to the new world. Occasionally i have found myself moreinterested in (or, perhaps, obsessed by) the material of the digressions than that of the maintext; occasionally i have wondered if the whole dissertation is not one long digression, aShandean exercise in self-consciousness. Ultimately, the division between main text anddigression has been relatively arbitrary; a shift in emphasis could easily move the material ofthe formal digressions from the intermediary position they occupy between the centralargument(s) of the main text and the marginalia of notes to either place. The centrality ormarginality of ideas reveals more about my priorities, values, and assumptions than anyintrinsic relative importance.In addition to using an eighteenth-century form for a twentieth-century function, ialso want these digressions to parallel the use of a double, a mirror or twinning, text in muchtravel literature. In Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977/1986),for example, both Clark Blaise17and Bharati Mukherjee record their year-long sojourn in India. Their separate accounts rarelyrefer to each other; instead, they inform each other mostly through the physical fact of beingunited in one book and the reader’s desire to view the events of one year through two pairsof eyes. (The cover of the Penguin edition promises “Two people, two cultures, onemarriage. “) In Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines (1987), a narrative of travels in and throughcentral Australia (ostensibly to learn about Aboriginal Songlines) frames the intellectual,emotional, and formal centre of the text: brief quotations, anecdotes, and Nietschzean penseésculled from “twenty-odd years of travel” (160). For example:Useless to ask a wandering manAdvice on the construction of a house.The work will never come to completion.After reading this text, from the Chinese Book of Odes, I realised theabsurdity of trying to write a book about nomads. (178)Paradoxically, Chatwin can only “set down on paper a résumé of the ideas, quotations andencounters which had amused and obsessed me; and which I hoped would shed light on whatis, for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness” (161) at a time whenhis own traveling has come, temporarily, to a halt. However, the whole momentum of thenarrative has been leading to this moment, which comes as no surprise after numerousreferences to Chatwin’s theories about nomads. His use of shadow-text (here, the narrativeof travel) provides a warning about the dangers of too much self-consciousness, i think; toomuch “I” in the work means that its title might more accurately be Bruce. While Chatwinhas obviously chosen this strategy to avoid stealing or appropriating Aboriginal knowledge,cultural sensitivity moves into the exercise of Mary Louise Pratt’s imperial eye: even a booksupposedly about Aboriginal Songlines can do no more than reveal the inner workings of theEnglishman abroad.My digressions function as shadow-text, sometimes commenting on and expandingthe issues discussed in the main text in a purely digressive fashion, but also (and perhaps18more importantly) attempting to dismantle the voice of absolute authority by calling“attention to its human source” (Porter 250) -- me, the lower-case i of the digressions.They are meant to suggest my self-fashioning as a scholar and critic “trying a new pen,”attempting to approach the question of constructions in a new way, neither fixing meaningabsolutely nor setting it entirely adrift. I cannot claim that these digressions reveal my ownareas of repression, since they have been consciously chosen and as carefully researched as themain text; however, i can hope that their juxtaposition reveals something about my“involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, orfromthe mere activity of being a member of society,” to borrow Edward Said’s formulation(Orientalism 10). Often, they do so by providing a space of meditation or rumination onsome of the ideological and methodological problems raised by my discussion. Perhaps themost crucial of these is the notion that the scholarly apparatus of the text -- in the case ofCook’s voyages, of the edition -- inscribes a way of knowing and its own authority, whicheffects a kind of textual domination. Thus the digressions provide a means to inject anongoing debate with myself (and hopefully the reader) about the ways in which my scholarlyproject is implicated in the process of domination, the proliferation of European words anddiscourses about new-world territories and peoples.A Particular History of LanguageThe exploration narrative is self-consciously presented as a document claiming authority onthe basis of eye-witness testimony and the speaker’s position of personal responsibility-- as the leaderof an expedition and representative of company or crown. Cook’s voyages were sponsored by theLords of the Admiralty, proclaiming their sanction by government and monarch in the very namesof ‘His Majesty’s Ships,” just as the King was the patron of the published texts. Cook’s audience19received and accepted the authority created in the narrative of the Voyages largely because thediscourse of the text was created and supported by an eighteenth-century intellectual climate. ThatCook’s voyages were promoted and attended by the leading scientific figures of the day (RoyalSociety member and later President Joseph Banks on the first voyage, the Forsters on the second)confirmed their contemporary reputation as sailing laboratories. A twentieth-century assessmentreveals that they also benefitted from a split in language and understanding differentiating “science”from ‘art,” especially literature. As Clifford notes in his “Introduction: Partial Truths” to WritingCulture,Since the seventeenth century . . . Western science has excluded certain expressivemodes from its legitimate repertoire: rhetoric (in the name of ‘plain,’ transparentlanguage), fiction (in the name of fact), and subjectivity (in the name of objectivity).The qualities eliminated from science were located in the category of ‘literature.’ (5)Such a distinction between science and literature means that writing of or about science and historywill be by definition mimetic3 or transparent, factual, objective, and unambiguous, in contrast toliterature, which must contain, as the corresponding category, writing which is metaphoric, fictional(in the sense of ‘not true’), subjective, and ambiguous, or open to interpretation. Although the ideaof a purely transparent and unadorned style may be fantasy, an understanding of writing whichdefines so-called figurative and plain styles in opposition theoretically precludes the one style fromexhibiting any features of the other.The texts of Cook’s Voyages have long been treated as unproblematic depositories of facts:scientific writing par excellence, the proof of this being that virtually no scholarly study of the texts’rhetorical effects, or discursive strategies, exists.4 Robin Fisher and Hugh Johnston’s “Introduction”to From Maps to Metaphors: The Pacific World of George Vancouver suggests a popularunderstanding of or vocabulary about Cook’s voyages: “Vancouver was a more prosaic explorer thanCook. He was not the first European to ‘discover’ any major piece of land” (11). The contrast set20up between the two explorers indicates that, unlike his successor, Cook was in fact “the first Europeanto ‘discover’ a major piece of land.” The different treatments of the two explorers’ bicentennialssuggests a changing public awareness of ‘exploration’ and ‘discovery’: “The bicentennial of[Vancouver’s] coming to the northwest coast did not receive the same recognition as the Cookbicentennial had fourteen years earlier. One reason was an increased consciousness among civicpoliticians and the public of Native issues and Native perspectives. A Vancouver event no longerseemed appropriate” (Fisher, FMM 13). The result was a celebration of “commemorative eventswhich determinedly avoided recognizing Vancouver himself’ in the city that bears his name (Fisher,FMM 7). This discrepancy indicates a change in public opinion, a different perspective perhaps; butthe editors’ phrasing -- “the first European to ‘discover’ a major piece of land” -- also indicates thatwhat has come to be called a Eurocentric worldview remains relatively unshaken, fundamentallyunaltered by quotation marks or alternate terminologies. Although the term “encounter,” for example,depends upon the notion of at least two participants meeting in time and space and thus offers theopportunity of disrupting the sense of uninhabited territory traditionally associated with the term“discover,” this process is still something seen and understood through European eyes, on Europeanterms. Words and usage may shift, fumbling towards a new understanding, but the thought-processesof colonialism are harder to change. A Judeo-Christian model of textual creation -- “in the beginningwas the Word and the Word was God” -- has seemingly been more effective in achieving dominationthan in dismantling it, perhaps because such models have been used for centuries to rationaliseEuropean territorial expansion at the expense of indigenous peoples.A Note on the TextsThere are two main editions of the texts of Cook’s voyages, including the third voyage, on21which I have focussed. The official first edition of the third voyage was published in 1784 (six yearsafter the ships arrived at Nootka Sound), sponsored by the Lords of the Admiralty and edited by Dr.John Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury. In 1967, the Hakluyt Society published a scholarly edition of thejournal of the third voyage, edited by the New Zealand historian J.C. Beaglehole (who also producedscholarly editions of the first and second voyages, an edition of Joseph Banks’ Endeavour journal,and a Life of Cook). Beaglehole’s scholarly edition of the third voyage often differs significantlyfrom Douglas’-- so significantly that the question “who speaks?” in the first edition becomes crucial.Are the words describing the first contact between English and Nootka Cook’s, or those of his editor,Dr. Douglas? Beaglehole’ s scholarly text presents a rather different scenario:We no sooner drew near the inlet than we found the coast to be inhabited and thepeople came off to the Ships in Canoes without shewing the least mark of fear ordistrust. We had at one time thirty two Canoes filled with people about us, and agroupe of ten or a dozen remained along side the Resolution [sic] most part of thenight. They seemed to be a mild inoffensive people, shewed great readiness to partwith any thing they had and took whatever was offered them in exchange, but weremore desireous of iron than any thing else, the use of which they very well knew andhad several tools and instruments that were made of it. (Beaglehole 111:1, 295-6)The two editions present dramatically different first impressions of Nootka Sound and itsinhabitants: in contrast to Douglas’ ethnographic descriptions of a moment which evidently has somecultural or ceremonial significance for the Nootka (as if they already realise the importance of thisencounter to the history of their coast), Beaglehole’ s edition offers a more prosaic and limiteddescription of behaviour meaningful to and understood by Europeans -- the desire to trade, Afootnote at the word “distrust” in Beaglehole, a reference to the log of Edward Riou, midshipman onthe Discovery and later on the Resolution, provides a possible source for Douglas’ text:‘When we first Entered this Sound at about 5 PM several Canoes came of [sic] to theShips and In them a set of the dirtiest beings ever beheld -- their faces and Hair beinga lump of red and black Earth and Grease -- Their Bodys [sic] covered with the Skinsof Animals or a kind of garment made Exactly like the Hahoo (or Cloth) of NewZealand but of a Quality very inferior and differently shaped. In the Canoe that first22came Along side was a Man that stood up and held forth a long while-- at the sametime pointing to the Sound as if the ship should go further Up -- his oratory did notseem to be the best in the world and he appeared to Utter with much difficulty; onhis head he wore a kind of hat made of Cane and in shape resembling a buck’s head;after having finished his harangue he presented it to Sale as well as several otherthings, which at once convinced us they were no novices at that business, in returnfor his hat he had a large Axe and left us quite Content.’ -- Riou, 30 March.(Beaglehole 111:1, 295-6)Comparing the two editions reveals Douglas’ role as editor in shaping for publication the officialaccount of a national hero “aimed at a reading public avid to hear the details of Cook’s death”(Obeyesekere 68). Indeed, Douglas had been specially chosen as the editor for the second voyage“to ensure that the style and contents ‘might be unexceptionable to the nicest readers.’ ‘In short,’[Cook] told Douglas, ‘my desire is that nothing indecent may appear in the whole book, and youcannot oblige me more than by pointing out whatever may appear to you as such” (Obeyesekere 24).Douglas’ task was perhaps somewhat easier than that of the editor of the first voyage, JohnHawkesworth, since “unlike the narrative of the first voyage, which was easily outshone by Banks’s,Cook wrote the shipboard narrative of his second voyage with an eye to an increasingly eager readingpublic” (Obeyesekere 24). Douglas approached his role as editor with care and forethought, as I.S.MacLaren has argued:Bishop Douglas knew well that, in replacing the deceased Hawkesworth, there wassomething to be avoided -- any hint of moral relativism, for example -- but much tobe retained from the literary invention of his deceased predecessor. Not only the firstperson, but also the characterization of the dutiful, magnanimous patriot, and --another Hawkesworthian innovation for Western European publishing -- the securingof the monarch as patron of the publication, comprised the chief qualities of thepattern that Douglas retained and polished in his editions of Cook’s second and thirdvoyages. Needless (and gratuitous) to say, Cook’s convenient death made the literaryennoblement of the explorer a much more straightforward task, not only because thereading public was disposed to take such a rendering of the third narrative, but alsobecause Cook was not around to take umbrage had he been inclined to. (“Inscribingthe Empire” 2)Ganath Obeyesekere claims that Cook “was no litterateur, but his journals had a down-to-earth23quality, and the description of places, practices, and events are superbly detailed, if not evocative ofthe forms of life of Pacific Islanders” (24); Douglas’ editorial task -- the “literary ennoblement of theexplorer,” in accordance with mid-eighteenth-century notions of decorum and appropriate behaviour-- was to shape the text of the journals so as to present and confirm Cook’s status as a hero and agentleman.This raises the question, however, of whether Douglas’ editing for elegance and rhetoricalflourish extends beyond the language of description to alter that which is described: does the officialedition of 1784 present Douglas’ beliefs about what Cook saw and/or what his audience expected tosee? MacLaren raises these questions in “Creating Travel Literature: The Case of Paul Kane”:one must not underestimate the changes that could occur when a travel journalmetamorphosed into a publishable commodity. Just as the perceptual baggage packedby the explorer or traveller influenced significantly the narrative expression of hisjournal, so the revisions made to the journal, either by him or for him upon his returnhome, significantly assisted the creation of the publishable commodity. (81)MacLaren argues that the potential profits to be realised from volumes of travel and explorationencouraged publishers to standardise “formats and sentence structures” (“CTL” 81), thussimultaneously shaping and meeting the expectations of their readership. While these revisions reveala discourse of class at work in addition to one of empire (MacLaren, “CTL” 93), the fact remains that“it is the published narrative produced with the travel-reading market in mind that influencessubsequent travel writers” (Greenfield 19). Even when journal accounts are available, and thepublished text differs markedly from them, the published text reveals what entered the publicdiscourse, what was sayable by an individual and acceptable to a culture. Accordingly, I aminterested in reading the journals of Cook’s third voyage, particularly the 1784 edition but alsoBeaglehole’ s, not as objective descriptions of reality but as a variety of discursive strategies whichachieved certain effects.24A Digression, concerning Methodolo2vI am left wondering how my own work participates in this process of textualdomination. Although i attempt to dismantle the voice of authority with my lower-case “i’s”and my digressions, which often function as meditations or ruminations, the urge toFOOTNOTE, to document my own intellectual lineage, and to corroborate my claims withthe evidence of (other?) experts, remains strong. (Of course, the institutional context demandsthat i demonstrate the authority, the solidity of my research, but it is partly this sense ofdocumentation for the sake of documentation that i want to dismantle, also.) Whatdifferentiates my text from Beaglehole’s edition of the third voyage? Nothing, perhaps, butintent and a certain degree of self-consciousness, a willingness to ask myself these questions.Is it enough to say “but mine is personal, situated” when i am obviously not offering anothertruth? No, but ultimately silence is not an option either.Charles Bazerman’s discussion of the difference between the writer and thepostmodern critic might offer a way out of the ideological double-bind i find mysef in,between construction (other people’s, of Cook) and de/re/anti-construction (my own, of thoseconstructions):Both the writer and the postmodernist critic consider language as ahuman activity shaping human consciousness with no necessaryconnection with objects beyond consciousness. But for the writer that isthe opening situation and challenge rather than the final critique.Similarly, where both see language as socially conditioned, to a writerthat is again a starting fact for a dialectical relationship between socialgivens and individual experiences, motives and inventiveness. While bothsee institutionalized social relations in received forms, the writer seesthose institutions as prior achievements forming opportunities for newachievements. While both see reading and textual interpretation as havingas much to do with the readers as with the text, the writer seesresponsibilities for both writers and readers to find in the text as muchmeeting ground as they can, rather than cutting each free to make of thetext what they wifi. While the writer is impressed with the world ofhuman consciousness created from nothing and thus feels responsible toparticipate in that creation of the human world, the postmodernist criticfinds the human world made of no more than phantasms of nothing. Inshort, the writer is always looking with delight and surprise at what can25be done with this fallen state. (12-3)Or, as Michael Taussig points out in his “Report to the Academy,” although it is commonlyaccepted that what we have taken for the real (race, sex, etc.) is in fact a set of socialconstructions, this revelation has functioned as a closure of the very topic it should open upto a re-examination of the world, which is no longer so clearly seen or known.The brilliance of the pronouncement was blinding. Nobody was askingwhat’s the next step? What do we do with this old insight? If life isconstructed, how come it appears so immutable? How come cultureappears so natural? If things coarse and subtle are constructed, thensurely they can be reconstructed as well? To adopt Hegel, the beginningsof knowledge were made to pass for actual knowing. (Mimesis andAlterity xvi)In both Bazerman and Taussig’s articulations of the problem, what is at stake is anengagement -- creative and critical -- with the world, a willingness to be provisional, tentative,to write onesef into knowing. With the notion of the “beginnings of knowledge,” theinvitation to “begin the critical project of analysis and cultural reconstruction” (Taussig xvi),i am offered the possibility of a direction without a destination, a choice beyond the non-options of closure and the endless deferral of meaning.It is always easier to destroy than to create -- easier to destroy Beaglehole’sscholarship without acknowledging that it is clearly a labour of love and reflects a deepcommitment to the subject and to scholarship itsef than to create an alternative. Ultimately,however, i don’t want to offer an alternative construction of Cook: i want to create somethingelse, a labour of love and a commitment to the power of language, words, texts, examiningcultural constructions and epistemologies. My account is partial, rhetorical, and tries to resistthe impulse to hide the inevitable sleights-of-hand. But my words will not change the worldin the way that Cook’s, or Douglas,’ have, nor will they support a widespread cultural sefimage, as Beaglehole’s have. Instead, by calling attention to their form, to their scholarly,textual, and intellectual supports, and sometimes to their texture, i hope to avoid some of the26pitfalls i have identified in Douglas and Beaglehole’s editions of the journals. It is not, assome critics might say, that nothing matters: cultural constructions, and their origins hiddenin the mists of ‘nature,’ do matter.Where I’m Calling FromA distinction between an unseif-conscious “exploration’ literature in the eighteenth centuryand a self-conscious, self-reflexive twentieth-century travel literature that foregrounds its own processof creation as text is to some extent oversimplified or perhaps even false. However, such adistinction is played out in various ways throughout this dissertation, notably in the contrast betweendifferent understandings of language and its relation to the world in the two time periods, and theconsiderable differences between Douglas’ eighteenth- and Beaglehole’ s twentieth-century edition ofthe text of Cook’s third voyage. These differences do not, however, extend to the understanding ofthe world and its knowability in language; Beaglehole’ s edition still maintains “some of theconventions of narrative history, [in which] the ‘realistic’ nineteenth-century novel [serves] as aparadigm for the historian’s art” (Rosenstone xii). Cook’s Voyages reflect an assumption of thereferentiality of language: it was his job to describe as best he could the new territories and peopleshe encountered, the job of the ships’ artists to provide supporting pictorial material (charts, sketchesof flora and fauna, landscapes, drawings of people), and the job of the editor to unite the whole intoa package which communicates not only a sense of the strangeness of the new world, but also a formof encounter and engagement with it. The book, meant to allow readers to discover the strange newworld for themselves without ever leaving home, mediates between old and new worlds. If thenavigator cannot accurately chart a coastline, if the draughtsmen cannot reproduce its distinctivefeatures, if the landing parties cannot communicate in some way with indigenous peoples, then the27scientific mission of the voyage has failed; if these discoveries cannot be conveyed to a Europeanaudience, the cultural mission of the voyage has failed. Both missions depend on an assumption thatthe world is knowable and that by its descriptions it is recognisable. In this regard, Cook’s Voyagesparticipate in one of the oldest traditions of travel literature as a genre:From the beginning, writers of travel have more or less unconsciously made it theirpurpose to take a fix on and thereby fix the world in which they found themselves;they are engaged in a kind of cultural cartography that is impelled by an anxiety tomap the globe, center it on a certain point, produce explanatory narratives, and assignfixed identities to regions and the races that inhabit them. Such representations arealways concerned with the question of place and placing, of situating oneself once andfor all vis-à-vis an Other or others. They are also an integral part of the ideologicalpractice of every social formation that becomes aware of more or less remote landsand neighbouring peoples. (Porter, HJ 21)That a speech-act can appropriate a territory according to European imperial culture demonstrates andenacts the desire for a transparent language characterised by the fixity of words and things.Much twentieth-century critical theory in literary studies and social science has destabilisedsuch monolithic (hegemonic?) structures of thought and language. In his introduction to HauntedJourneys, Porter outlines other models which emerged to contest the assumption of a worldunproblematically known through scientific observation and described in transparent languagegoverning scientific expeditions like Cook’s as they apply to travel literature. One, positing a worldequally fixed, but by a perennial unknowability, comes from Said’s discursive theory in Orientalism:“if articulate language is a collective enterprize of the kind Said describes, then the individual is notfree to write against the discursive grain, but is bound by an already constituted system of utterances.In short, in all our representations of things foreign, a knowledge -- as opposed to an ideology -- of-tkzf ofthe Other is impossible” (Porter, HJ 4). Said’s understanding of discourse comes from Foucault,whose early works define discourse as “a form of violence done to the world and its inhabitants” bymeans of a complicitous, not oppositional, relationship between power and knowledge-- a complicity28“maintained through material as well as discursive practices, and their institutional supports” (Porter,HJ 4). A discursive model which views all statements about the world as interested, politics passingthemselves off as truth (some with greater success than others), replaces the eighteenth-centuryscientific model of disinterested truths about a world carefully observed by a detached, authoritativevoice, unaffected by local politics. The marketplace of ideas is no longer governed by laissez-faireeconomics (if indeed it ever was): just as some nations are wealthier than others, and act to increasethat wealth, so some discourses carry more weight than others at culturally and historically specificmoments.Porter identifies a way out of this closed system in travel writers’ process of exploringthemselves in addition to the unknown world; as they come to know themselves differently, they maypossibly remake themselves and thus break free of the oppositional categories of self and other, truthand politics. He finds a hopeful model in the defamiliarisation project of Russian Formalism, whereinan image “creates a ‘vision’ of the object instead of serving as a means of knowing it,” and in aBarthesian semiology which concludes “that ‘literature’ is precisely a sphere of language use thatresists the exercise of power encoded within it. ‘Literature’ is a form of ‘trickery’ with and againstlanguage” (Porter, HJ 6). The very fact of a text’s shaping in language -- the absence of a fixedrelation between words and things -- frees it to mean that which, theoretically, it cannot mean in aworld which has heretofore assumed the fixity of words and things. This critical understanding goesbeyond individual examples to the general forms: previously unproblematic identities (such as race,sex, the individual) can no longer be taken for granted. The critical value of such a deconstructiveor post-structuralist project for travel and exploration literature is immediately obvious “because itrejects the correspondence theory of truth: namely, that it is possible to produce verbal statementswhich are held in some sense to be in correspondence with a pregiven reality” (Porter, Hf 7). Of29course, it is upon precisely that ‘correspondence theory of truth” that the authority of texts such asCook’s Voyages rests.The self-consciousness of twentieth-century travel narratives (such as Tristes Tropiques, TheSonglines) depends on precisely this rejection of correspondence.Nowhere perhaps as much as in the field of travel writing, in fact, is thefundamental ambiguity of ‘representation’ more apparent. To represent the world isa political as well as an aesthetic-cognitive activity. It is an effort to put somethingalien into the words of a shared language for someone at home and to put oneself inthe Other’s place abroad in order to speak on its behalf. One is at the same timerepresentor and representative, reporter and legislator. And in all that one writes, onealso inevitably (re)presents, however imperfectly, oneself. (Porter, HJ 15-6)The danger of this model, however, lies in writing that can never refer to anything but itself, its owncreation and construction -- a writing about the Other that reveals, relentlessly, a unitary, univocal,Western identity. Bruce Chatwin still looks like “the man from Western Civ” in a world where travelfor its own sake is largely available only to a leisure class -- as is writing, possibly.5 Porter usesconcepts like “transgression” and “desire” in a “broadly psychoanalytic sense” to examine travelers’motivations and often ambivalent reactions to a foreign country (transference and projection ofnegative and positive desires) (Hf 8).This psycholanalytic model, Porter argues, suggests a critical methodology of “attentivelistening,” which can reveal the kinds of fantasies that travelers “display often in spite of themselves”(Hf 9, 13). The difference between Cook’s voyages in the late eighteenth century and Chatwin’ stravels two hundred years later lies in the two views of language and the self that these texts create.Chatwin, a young man from a family of “horizon-struck wanderers who had scattered their bones inevery corner of the earth” (6), who chucked “a job as an ‘expert’ on modern painting with a wellknown firm of art auctioneers” in London to investigate nomads (16), writes a travel accountfashioned from an apogee of individualism. His baggage takes the form of ideas, theories about30nomads; his relative lack of material possessions leaves him free for introspection. He defines bynegation the English culture that produced him; it forms the silent backdrop to the self, anxious tounderstand and eager to please, created in the text. In contrast, any unconscious fantasies in the textsof Cook’s Voyages reveal not an individual but a cultural self-fashioning through the scholarlyapparatus of the edition.While Porter’s discussion of contemporary critical and cultural theory opens up the genre oftravel literature, his use of psychoanalysis depends on the choice of “travel’ (as opposed to“exploration”) as the operative term. Since it is “both ahistorical and apolitical” (Porter, HJ 14),psychoanalytic theory alone is inadequate to theorise exploration; a political theory) capable ofexamining power and its deployments, is required. Chris Weedon explores the oppositionalpossibilities of poststructuralism in Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory, beginning withan analysis of Foucault’ s concept of the discursive field:Discursive fields consist of competing ways of giving meaning to the world and oforganising social institutions and processes. They offer the individual a range ofmodes of subjectivity. Within a discursive field, for instance, that of the law or thefamily, not all discourses will carry equal weight or power. Some will account for andjustify the appropriateness of the status quo. Others will give rise to challenges toexisting practices from within or will contest the very basis of current organisationand the selective interests which it represents. Such discourses are likely to bemarginal to existing practice and dismissed by the hegemonic system of meanings andpractices as irrelevant or bad. (35)Weedon’s approach moves beyond the moral relativism of a notion of difference that is often reducedto ‘the endless deferral of meaning,’ a false radicalism that ultimately -- like the post-modernistcriticism outlined by Bazerman -- maintains and upholds a status quo.6 Instead, she opens up thepossibility of a critical and oppositional discourse analysis which can interrogate and engage withtexts in historically-specific ways, and whose goal and purpose is:to explain the working of power on behalf of specific interests and to analyse theopportunities for resistance to it. It is a theory which decentres the rational, self-31present subject of humanism, seeing subjectivity and consciousness, as sociallyproduced in language, as a site of struggle and potential change. Language is nottransparent as in humanist discourse, it is not expressive and does not label a ‘real’world. Meanings do not exist prior to their articulation in language and language isnot an abstract system, but is always socially and historically located in discourses.Discourses represent political interests and in consequence are always vying for statusand power. The site of this battle for power is the subjectivity of the individual andit is a battle in which the individual is an active but not sovereign protagonist.(Weedon 41)Such an understanding of discourse and its material effects is politically useful, suggesting whatWittig offers as a social contract for the twentieth century: “to a writer language offers a veryconcrete matter to grasp hold of. It seems to me that the first, the permanent and the final socialcontract is language. The basic agreement between human beings, indeed what makes them humanand makes them social, is language” (“On the Social Contract” 34). Cook’s voyages have constructeda certain kind of social contract (defined by Rousseau as “the sum of fundamental conventions which‘even though they might never have been formally enunciated are nevertheless implied by living insociety” [Wittig, “OSC” 38]) for the settler cultures in the territories he “discovered.” They, in turn,have constructed and reified Cook in their own image. Although this culture has been made to look“natural” and thus unchangeable, as Wittig reminds me, the situation is not immutable: “Society wasnot made once and for all. The social contract will yield to our action, to our words” (“OSC” 38).The site of struggle is not the individual but the culture created by the discourses at work (andsometimes at play) in Cook’s Voyages. That is to say, the foundation of these discourses lies incertain meanings culturally and historically specific to eighteenth-century England; but thesediscourses also created and perpetuated their own support.Post-colonial criticism offers another obvious political approach to the texts of Cook’svoyages. In The Empire Writes Back (1989), the authors use the term “post-colonial” to “cover allthe culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day. This32is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated byEuropean imperial aggression” (2). The term serves double-duty as an adjective indicating a criticismthat treats not only the literary culture of former colonies, but also examines the ideologicalunderpinnings and material results of imperial expansion.In pushing the colonial world to the margins of experience the ‘centre’ pushedconsciousness beyond the point at which monocentrism in all spheres of thought couldbe accepted without question. In other words the alienating process which initiallyserved to relegate the post-colonial world to the ‘margin’ turned upon itself and actedto push that world through a kind of mental barrier into a position from which allexperience could be viewed as uncentred, pluralistic, and multifarious. Marginalitythus became an unprecedented source of creative energy. (Ashcroft 12)Unlike some other critical theories celebrating plurality, post-structuralism for example, the termupost_colonial? insists on the historical realities of European appropriation of new-world territoriesand the oppression of new-world peoples. However, the oppositional metaphor of centre and marginsstill privileges the imperial centre, even when the terms of difference are inverted: “deconstructingimperialism keeps us within imperialism’s orbit” (Brydon 89).Perhaps, as Wittig argues in “The Straight Mind” (1980), this is true of any politics ofdifference, beginning with Marxism: “when thought by the straight mind, homosexuality is nothingbut heterosexuality” (28). Because of the totalising effect of discourses which affect materialoppression, difference (however radical) is subsumed, appropriated, or invisibilised by hegemony.In a later essay (“Homo Sum” 1990), Wittig’s position has changed somewhat: “in the order ofreasoning, in the order of possibility and potentiality, in philosophy the Other cannot essentially bedifferent from the One, it is the same . . . . for ‘nothing human is alien’ to the One or to the Other”(56). Perhaps the changed emphasis in Wittig’s essays, written a decade apart, comes from a changedintellectual climate in which the terms of privilege have theoretically been inverted, in which “goodis no more to be found in the parameter of the One, of Male, of Light, but in the parameter of the33Other, of Female, of Darkness” (“HS” 56). To some extent such a shift in critical emphasis makespost-colonial criticism possible, as the field of literary study opens up to include so-called non-canonical projects (like this one). However, merely inverting the terms cannot transform the system:“I do not know who is going to profit from this abandonment of the oppressed to a trend that willmake them more and more powerless, having lost the faculty of being subjects even before havinggained it” (“HS” 57). Wittig’s theory therefore abandons inversion in favour of a radicalproblematising beyond “a right to Difference’ . . . which by reversing everything corresponds to theTweedledum and Tweedledee of Lewis Carroll” (“HS” 57). Instead, she moves back to the questionof the One and who constitutes it:There is no need when coming under the parameters of the oppressed to follow theMarxian design and to wait until the ‘final victory’ to declare that the oppressed arehuman as well as the dominators, that women are human as well as men. Where isthe obligation for us to go on bearing with a series of ontological, etymological, andlinguistic entourloupettes under the pretext that we do not have the power. It is partof our fight to unmask them, to say that one out of two men is a woman, that theuniversal belongs to us although we have been robbed and despoiled at this level aswell as at the political and economic ones. (“HS” 55-6)The social contract we have constructed (and been constructed by) is not incapable of transformation,although it is imaged as if it were static and unchanging. For Wittig, this state introduces the crucialquestion of dialectics (from Marx and Engels via Hegel): “the step forward for Marx was to show thatdialectical categories such as the One and the Other, Master and Slave, were not there to stay and hadnothing metaphysical about them, but had to be understood in historical terms” (“HS” 52). These aredynamic, not immutable, categories and conditions functioning in the realm of the political, not themetaphysical: constructions, constructed in and by language.“But what if it were a war machine?”7what we call Colonial discourse is neither a monolithic system nor a finite set of34texts; it may more accurately be described as the name for a series of colonialdiscourses, each adapted to a specific historical situation, yet having in commoncertain elements with the others. This series is marked by internal repetition, but notby an all-encompassing totality . . . . (Spurr 1-2)Although I have used the singular, “Colonial Discourse,” in my title, the plural form mightbe more accurate. This dissertation undertakes to interrogate the varied and sometimes seeminglycontradictory discourses of colonialism whose cumulative effect is monolithic in the texts of Cook’smonth at Nootka Sound and in the scholarly and critical accounts of Cook’s voyages. I have isolateda few discourses -- those of aesthetics, science, cannibalism, and history-- having particularimportance for this month in the context of Cook’s voyages, illuminating certain ideas and clustersof ideas relevant to a number of scholarly interests and intellectual questions. The textual corpus ofCook’s Voyages is vast: I have chosen to look at one moment which expands in other directions,raising issues not universally true to all travel and exploration literature, offering this discussion asa beginning in a growing field -- with relevance for studies of other travel and exploration narratives,eighteenth-century English culture, post-colonial criticism. This study, crossing temporal, geographic,and disciplinary lines, brings together a cultural history of the eighteenth-century English-speakingworld, an intellectual history of European discourses supporting the growth of racism and the birthof English colonies in an expanding empire, and a close reading of a textual encounter with social,political, and economic implications. For the discourses I trace here have currency still, a currencywhich is sometimes legitimated by their origins as discourses in an imperial past, complete withnostalgic yearnings.For most Europeans reading the journal of Cook’s third voyage, this first encounter with thePacific Northwest is textual (occurring in the act of reading); however, it is clearly a colonialencounter also, given that the first fur-trading vessel arrived at Nootka Sound one year after “thepublication of the official account of Cook’s third voyage in 1784 and Captain James King’s35revelation that some of the best skins had sold for $120,” confirming “rumours of the profits to bemade by selling sea-otter furs in China” (Fisher, Contact and Conflict 2). This colonial encountergave England both material and spiritual advantages: the wealth of (European) nations who profitedfrom this trade, and a sense of identity for English people through the very idea of empire. (AsKathleen Wilson argued in her paper at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studiesconference in 1992, the popular appeal of empire in eighteenth-century England constructed agendered nationalism of aggressive masculinity as definitively English.8) This dissertation, then,explores the use of European discourses to establish textually Cook’s authority and (by extension)England’s claim to possession of the Pacific Northwest. These discourses, governing the context ofCook’s voyages and played out in the texts, contribute to a single overriding imperial purpose,justifying European claims to possession in the new world and its appropriation from the inhabitantsalready present at the moment of contact.36Chapter OneApproaching the Northwest Coast:Art. Exploration, and Cook’s Third VoyageIn the spring of 1778, the party of Captain James Cook’s third voyage spent a month at aplace now -- as a result of that first English contact -- called Nootka Sound, on the west coast ofVancouver Island. Cook, and the officers and crewmen under him, read the northwest coast througha double filter, using not only the perceptual tools of Europe, but also those formed over the courseof their experiences in the South Pacific. The North Pacific required a reorientation that was alsodouble, by Cook as the recording subject and by the audience of the published account as readers.Over the course of the voyage, Cook and his audience had gained some familiarity with the SouthPacific, which created an impression, however mistaken, of cumulative knowledge. The sailors’ needto trade for fur clothing at Nootka Sound demonstrates the transition from the inviting enviromnentof the South Pacific (symbolised for European readers by the Islanders’ near-nudity, a fact whichbecame a trope) to the more forbidding North Pacific. As one journal writer, George Gilbert, put it,“indeed we had need for we experienc[e]d very little [Comfort] from our own provisions, which wereonly just Sufficient to keep us alive” (Gilbert 66). Nootka Sound represents a different geography,a different climate, a different culture: in short, everything is different from the South Pacific.A sense of the newer newness of the North Pacific, and the way in which it represents forCook another unfamiliarity which must be accommodated and incorporated, is provided by J.C.Beaglehole, the New Zealand historian who (probably more than any one else) has followed bothphysically and textually in Cook’s wake. In Alan Frost’s phrase, Beaglehole’ s “comment aboutVancouver Island. . . helps us to understand Cook’s first response to it” (Frost 97). As if to rebukeor counter those surprised that Cook missed Juan de Fuca Strait and thus failed to realise he was not37on the mainland, Beaglehole writes:Vancouver Island is built on vast proportions: no one approaching it from the sea, oreven flying down its coast, would take it for an island--the scale of hills behind hillsis too great, the snowy mountains inland recede too far, the line of breakers is toolong; the very clouds are almost too immense. The spruce and hemlock and cedar ofthe forest cover it, to within a few feet of the sea; the flat points reaching a short wayinto the ocean are covered; the islets off-shore are crowned with trees, like gravebarbaric princesses pacing up the coast to some remote festival; trees spring, it seems,from each individual solid rock. The sides of the sound and of the minor islets thatrun off it, north, east, and south, fall precipitous to the water, with only here and therea narrow strip of land marching with it, or a larger ledge. (Beaglehole, Lfe of CaptainJames Cook 583-4)The phrase “vast proportions” in Beaglehole’s first sentence immediately signals the vocabulary ofthe Sublime, redefined with emotional weight by Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry intothe Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756). Burke “reasoned that man’s twomost powerful feelings were love and hate, expressed as attraction and repulsion. While a sense ofbeauty was aroused by those objects that seemed attractive, a sense of sublimity was induced by thoseobjects whose properties seemed repellent, such as excessive size, darkness, or infinite extension”(Vaughan 33). The use of the aesthetic vocabulary of the Sublime (in 1974) by the man whose lifework has been the production of scholarly editions of Cook’s voyages (voyages synonymous withscience for the eighteenth century) initially seems a little odd. The absence of a contrast ordistinction between the two discourses -- popularly considered to be virtually antithetical in the latetwentieth century-- suggests an eighteenth-century understanding of aesthetic and scientific discoursesas interdependent rather than mutually exclusive.Issues and ContextsPost-colonial literary theory and criticism commonly assume that Europeans writing about thenew world attempted to mediate the difference between their familiar European homelands and the38strange new territories, exploring the “profound disjunction” between “the various systems of meaningand knowing developed over the millenia of their association with Old World landscapes, andinscribed in their language” and the new territories where such systems seemed inadequate at best(Seaton 3). Such a discursive gap is underlined by the fact that the expectations Europeans broughtfrom the old world necessarily coloured the impressions they could form of the new. In addition,their old-world ways of seeing and knowing made it virtually impossible for Europeans to understandthe new world in any terms other than its similarities to, or differences from, the old, usuallyrendering difference as inferiority. Accordingly, post-colonial readings of exploration narratives havefocussed on the way the latter represent new-world landscapes using such European aestheticconventions as the Picturesque or the Sublime.The work of I.S. MacLaren on various overland travel accounts of British North Americaduring the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries analyses and theorises the ways in which theresponses of these British explorers to new world territories derive, but also depart, from prevailingconventions of landscape appreciation.1 In recording their responses in this fashion, British explorerswere not merely evil imperialists so thoroughly dominating that they could not even visuallyacknowledge new world sovereignty, without positing difference as inferiority; rather, they saw whattheir educations, experiences and cultures had taught them to see. Nor was this process necessarilyconscious: “Pope’s dictum, recorded by Spence in his Anecdotes, that ‘all gardening is landscapepainting’, applied throughout the eighteenth century” (Hunt 13). The reverse was also true: JohnBarrell has stated, in his The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place, that by “the later eighteenthcentury, it became impossible for anyone with an aesthetic interest in landscape to look at thecountryside without applying [principles of landscape composition], whether he knew it or not” (6).MacLaren’ s studies of various overland expeditions demonstrate that British explorers not only39described, but also viewed the landscapes of discovery as if through a Claude glass or cameraobscura, devices which transformed nature into landscape pictures: ‘their reports indicate that thepervasive schemata of the Sublime and the Picturesque, which had governed earlier landscaperesponses to the West by Britons, extended even to ‘scientific’ descriptions of land. As with Britishmariners in the Arctic, these eighteenth-century schemata had remained fundamental to the early- andmid-nineteenth-century British perceptions of Britain and the rest of the British empire” (MacLaren,“Aesthetic Mappings of the West” 24). In his analysis of Palliser’ s survey expedition (1857-60),MacLaren argues that “the British preference for the picturesque landscape-- undulating, well-wateredparkland of delimited scope and scale, and exhibiting only moderately-sized geographical features --over sublime vertical or horizontal vastness” goes beyond a sense of cozy familiarity to psychologicalorientation. English explorersfelt lost in Sublime environments: “frequently without a prospect pointfrom which to compose an orderly view of the landscape, Palliser felt that nature controlled hisdestiny. Time and space overwhelmed him, just as, Coleridge had argued at the beginning of the[nineteenth] century, vastness overwhelmed man’s capacity to imagine it” (MacLaren, “AMW” 26-7).The result is a linguistic failure in response to Sublime landscapes; in contrast to the “ecstaticresponses to the aspen groves of the North Saskatchewan River valley and more northern parklands”(a landscape which could be perceived as picturesque) stands the “nearly complete silence towardsthe vast, open grasslands in the vicinity of the South Saskatchewan River” (MacLaren, “AMW” 26).In similar fashion, Sir George Back’s description of the area surrounding Great Slave Lake(from his expedition in the eastern Arctic in the 183Os) explicitly uses the vocabulary of the Sublime.Neither the sublimity of the Alps, nor the picturesqueness of England could furnishthe appropriate taxonomy for delineating the barren scene. First, employing the noun‘nothing’ in a superlative sense (‘I had seen nothing in the Old World...’), Backemploys it twice again to connote the scene’s emptiness; together with an emphasison the ‘endless’ scene, this achieves the idea that, if degrees of absence are possible,then the nothingness confronting him is more barren than anything seen by any of his40readers on the Grand Tour. Not surprisingly, his only literary recourse is to call forththe one landscape, real or fanciful, which can assist in conveying the visual chaosconfronting him: he directly quotes Milton’s Paradise Lost (I, 46) . . . . (MacLaren,“The Grandest Tour” 441)MacLaren’ s own title here echoes the language of degrees: he describes Back’s expedition as “TheGrandest Tour.” Although both the Palliser and Back survey expeditions come some decades afterCook’s time at Nootka Sound, the aesthetic responses to the Canadian West they recorded arearticulated according to notions developed well before Cook’s time (Burke’s Philosophical Enquirywas published in 1756) or contemporaneous with the publication of his journals (notably WilliamGilpin’s Observations on the River Wye [17831).2 Seeing new-world landscapes through Europeanaesthetic frameworks such as the Picturesque and the Sublime made them intelligible to Europeanexplorers; describing them in these terms made meaningful communication with European readerspossible. MacLaren describes the function of this visual orientation:This process of the identification of nature bears an affinity with the purpose ofastronomical measurement: just as the determination of longitude and latitude told thetraveller/explorer where he was in relation to Greenwich, so the habitual descriptionof terrain by means of the Sublime and the Picturesque told him where he wasrelative to the landscapes roundabout Greenwich and the rest of England and Scotland.(“Samuel Hearne and the Landscape of Discovery” 28)Visual appropriation, or the exercise of what Mary Louise Pratt has called the “imperial eye,” is anissue for a post-colonial reading of the use of this aesthetic vocabulary, but not the only issue here:“discovery” may function as scientific travel by the late eighteenth century, but it is not disinterested.As Harriet Guest has noted in a discussion of Reynolds’ portrait of Omai,The British repeatedly articulated their interest in the South Pacific in terms of theunderdetermined and ambiguously transactive notion of curiosity -- what Boswellidentified as ‘the enthusiasm of curiosity and adventure’, experienced when ‘one iscarried away with the general grand and indistinct notion of A VOYAGE ROUNDTHE WORLD’. The sense that this project is somehow set apart from the ambitiousviews of conquest, trade, and settlement by the whimsicality, licentiousness, orenlightened and scientific purity of curiosity seems to point to an internal anddomestic ambivalence about the demarcation of vice from virtue-- to an equivocation41within the culture of civilised life that may be projected and exoticized in Reynolds’image. (105)Bank’s comment to Mrs Cook -- “His name will lie forever in the remembrance of a people gratefulfor the services his labours have afforded to mankind in general”-- suggests that “Cook’s scientificnon-partisan achievement should stand on its own merits even at a time when the strategic importanceof colonial exploration could not fail to be recognised” (Bann 216), as if Cook stands for thisdisinterested pursuit of knowledge, Europe’s best representative. Aesthetic and scientific discoursesboth claim “objectivity” and “disinterestedness” as basic assumptions; this allows seemingly mutuallyexclusive projects -- the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and the very interested pursuit ofeconomic and political power -- to occupy the same space. For European powers, rapidly becomingimperial powers, discovery equalled a claim to possession of new world territories. At the same time,explorers necessarily read the landscapes they discovered according to the tropes and conventions oftheir time and place, being no more exempt than I am from the consequences of history.Observers of nature, in the new world and the old, see and describe what they have beentaught to look for. The Admiralty instructed Cook to represent, in the text of his journal and in themaps, charts, and drawings of his draughtsmen and artists, “what may be useful to [European]Navigation or Commerce.” His instructions went on to state:You are also, with the consent of the Natives to take possession, in the Name ofthe King of Great Britain, of convenient Situations in such Countries as you maydiscover that have not already been discovered or visited by any European Power, andto distribute among the Inhabitants such Things as will remain as Traces andTestimonies of your having been there . . . . (Beaglehole 111:1, ccxxiii)Notwithstanding the specious logic of taking possession of new world territories with the consent oftheir inhabitants, this passage illustrates another representative function of the visual and verbalaccounts of new-world territories in the published texts of the voyage. They function as proof ofCook’s having been there, evidence supporting England’s claim to possession. (In this sense the42published text is documentary, or can be, was, taken as such.) In addition to its practical imperative,the custom of trading trinkets has the same imperial purpose: the presence of trade goodssubstantiates, from the other side of the world, the claim to possession represented by the text.Bernard Smith has argued that “European experience of the Pacific . . . challenged thesupremacy of neo-classical values in cosmological theory as it had helped to challenge those valuesin the theory and practice of landscape-painting” (European Vision and the South Pacific 5).However, European representation of the new world has political, social and economic consequencesin addition to intellectual and aesthetic ones, as is particularly apparent in the visual representationof the inhabitants of the new world according to the conventions of European portraiture.A Digression, concerning engravingIn her “reverse ethnography” of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Englishmen inNorth America, Karen Ordahi Kupperman argues that Early Modern Englishmen wereinterested in those aspects of Indian society that confirmed its similarity to, as well as itsdifference from, their own. At a time when position and place in society were such a crucialquestion for English government -- as was, indeed, the nature of government itself --Englishmen in America were particularly interested in the social hierarchies of Indian society.Accordingly, they took care in their visual representations of “Indian chiefs” to convey thatthese societies did in fact have governments which resembled European ones in such aspectsas the recognition of hereditary leadership and stratification along class lines.Englishmen writing about America, and Americans, assumed appearance to be a “keycommunicator of the truth about one’s character and status,” and therefore devoted manywords to descriptions ofIndian clothes and hair styles, tattooing and jewelery, posture and skincolor. In short the descriptions concentrate almost exclusively on aspects43of appearance which were within the control of the person described.Early modem Englishmen believed that people can create their ownidentity, and that therefore one communicates to the world throughsignals such as dress and other forms of decoration who one is, whatgroup or category one belongs to. (Kupperman 35)Engravers reproducing drawings of Indians, particularly Indian chiefs, for publication tookgreat care to represent the marks of leadership; other elements of the image, like posture, wereconsidered unimportant and therefore rendered in the customary way, giving these natives(somewhat bizarrely) the postures of classical statues. Kupperman compares the engravingsin De Bry’s America (1590) with the original watercolours by John White of Indians atRaleigh’s Roanake colony. De Bryretained White’s meticulous attention to detail in dress, hairstyle, andbody decoration, but changed the faces, postures, and bodies of theIndians in dramatic ways. Their faces were sweetened, softened, andEuropeanized. With their high foreheads, puckered mouths and ringletedhair they resemble the classical figures in the German engraving tradition.(Kupperman 33)Kupperman offers two possible explanationsfor rendering images of Indians as “prettier” andmore appealing to Europeans: first, that such a depiction is part of the ideological apparatusof the colonising appeal, functioning in the same way as descriptions of nakedness, meant tosuggest America’s temperate climate.3 She also suggests “that while dress and other externalkinds of decoration were seen as extremely important, faces and postures were not importantenough to preserve. The engravers, then, simply rendered these as they were accustomed todo” (34). In support of this negative evidence, Kupperman notes that faces and postures aregenerally not mentioned in early accounts.The ideological purpose is as clear here as it in the post-colonial argument: suchpostures -- whether by accident or design -- confirm the nobility of their subjects as a class,recognisable as such to a European audience, and the common humanity they share withEuropeans. Smith describes the production of such engravings in the context of a particulareconomic, aesthetic, and intellectual climate. As ‘fewer walls and more books became available44for history painters to decorate,” some artists (like Bartolozzi and Cipriani, who producedmany of the engravings for Cook’s Voyages) applied the codes of history painting to theengravings for such books; others (like Sir Joshua Reynolds) applied these codes to portraiture(Ima-inin the Pacific 60). Accordingly, “the nobility either of aristocrats or of ‘savages’ isnot to be understood as a false kind of perception, but as an aesthetic grace which thesovereign artist bestows upon those whom hefavours as the situation justifies” (Smith, IP 61).The question is one of representation in general:this application of the grand style [the noble and dignified portrayal ofa notable event] to the portrayal of the events of Cook’s voyages waslargely a contingent matter that arose from the Italianate domination ofEnglish taste during the early years of the Royal Academy, not a generalpredisposition characteristic of late eighteenth-century depictions ofPacific people as a whole. (Smith, IP 178)This “art as information” (Smith, 51) goes beyond Reynolds’ portrait of Omaidressed in the flowing robes of the Middle East, thus investing him with the vestiges ofOrientalism as well as with the dignity of history painting (figure 1.11. Even less obviouslymediated representations of natives emphasise characteristics important to a discussionEuropeans are having amongst themselves. Peter Mason’s point about the place of propernames such as “America” in a system of European signs applies to this image of Omai: “therepresentations of ‘America’ can easily acquire their Oriental colouring orflavour because theyrefer to other representations and not to the truth of the represented” (33)•4 Smith describesthe contrast between Hodges’ portrait of Tu in red chalk (figure 1.21 and the engraving by I.Hall published in the official account of the second voyage (figure 1.31. “Something of (Tu ‘51intelligence, his nervous, apprehensive vitality, and perhaps even his cunning may be gleanedfrom this portrait, perhaps the finest Hodges ever drew.” In contrast, the engraving revealsa loss in quality; we have moved back from the individual to the type.The presentation has become insensitive, the mouth thicker; the hairmatted to a mop, the once-puzzled expression now vacuous: we feel thatan individual has been reduced to the impersonality of an icon. What weare observing here, however, is probably nothing more than the45FIGURE 1.1 Omai, portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.Reproduced from Bernard Smith, European Visionand the South Pacific (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 1985), plate 63, p. 80.FIGURE12Tu,redchalkdrawingbyWilliamHodges.ReproducedfromSmith,EuropeanVisionandtheSouthPacific,plate63, p.74.FIGURE1.3OtooKingof0-TaheiteDrawnfromNaturebyW.Hodges,engravingbyJ.Hall.ReproducedfromSmith,EuropeanVisionandtheSouthPacific,plate60, p.74.047deficiency of line engraving as a medium for the conveyance of subtleinformation, not necessarily the imposition by the engraver of personalpreconceptions upon the character of a man of the Pacific. (Smith, IP 67-9)However, the process is not so neutral as a mere description of the means of reproducingimages suggests. Different techniques existed-- soft-ground etchings and stipple engravings-- which reproduced drawings more accurately, and although Smith suggests that Hodgeschose red chalk so that his drawings would be produced using these new processes, they werenot (j 66-7). Whether transformed by history painting into Orientalist splendour or reducedto savagery by line engraving, Pacific peoples suffer the consequences of representation.Berger’s point about nudes in Western painting is relevant here:You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, youput a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morallycondemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for yourown pleasure.The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make thewoman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight. (51)In the Western art tradition -- still overwhelmingly dominated by white men, as the GuerrillaGirls (“conscience of the art world”) remind me -- images of Europe’s “others,” women andnon-European peoples, must be examined as constructions, ideological documents, whichdemonstrate and maintain the cultural self-image of Europe, and not only as representationsor “scenes.”The obvious literary equivalent to the process of engraving which “Europeanises”new-world people is Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko: Or, the Royal Slave (1688), in which thenarrator’s description of her hero’s physical appearance develops the subtitle’s oxymoron.He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancy’d: themost famous Statuary cou’d not form the Figure of a Man moreadmirably tum’d from head to foot.. . . His Nose was rising and Roman,instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could beseen; far from those great turn’d Lips, which are so natural to the rest ofthe Negroes. The whole Proportion and Air of his Face was so nobly andexactly form’d, that bating his Colour there could be nothing in Naturemore beautiful, agreable and Handsome. (Behn 8)48Oroonoko’s spotless and admirable character is consistent with his physical near-perfection,as the narrator hastens to assure the reader: “Nor did the Perfections of his Mind come shortof those of his Person” (Behn 8). Oroonoko’s prettiness, of person and disposition,simultaneously causes and results from the novel’s generic and ideological structure whereanti-slavery sentiments, Royalist ideology, heroic romance, and travel narrative recountingthe exotic wonders of the world coalesce. As Laura Brown argues in “The Romance ofEmpire,”Oroonoko is thus not only a natural European and aristocrat, but anatural neoclassicist and Royalist as well, an absurdity generated by thedesire for a intimate identification with the ‘royal slave.’ . . Behn’snarrator seems to have only two choices: to imagine the ‘other’ either asabsolutely different and hence inferior, or as identical and hence equal.(48)The narrative, of course, does both. As the hero of a heroic romance who could have walkedright off the Restoration stage, Oroonoko is identical and hence equal. However, the ironiessuggested by the subtitle continually displace this identification. At the moment when he ismost the hero of a romance, most equal, Oroonoko’s difference and inferiority as a slave areall too apparent. He and his lover, Imoinda, swear their undying love (as the code of heroicromance requires) in a context which renders this declaration utterly ridiculous:they mutually protested, that even Fetters and Slavery were soft andeasy, and would be supported with Joy and Pleasure, while they cou’dbe so happy to possess each other, and to be able to make good theirvows. Caesar swore he disdained the Empire of the World, while he couldbehold his Imoinda. (Behn 44)“Caesar” is the name given Oroonoko by his English master, Mr Trefry, and signals in thispassage the genre of travel narrative, particularly that describing new-world colonies. Thisgenre is foregrounded as the novel begins with a catalogue of the exotic wonders of the WestIndies, including a ‘feathered habit which the narrator acquires, and which, she claims,became upon her return to England the dress of the Indian Queen in Dryden’s heroic play ofthat name (1664), an artfact of imperialism displayed in the most spectacular method possible49-- adorning thefemalefigure of a contemporary actress on the real stage of the Theatre Royalin Bridges Street” (Brown 52). In similar fashion, the whole novel becomes a symbol ofimperial power: the narrator could not have heard this story ‘from the Mouth of the chiefActor in this History, the Hero himself” (Behn 1), and represented it, and him, to Englishreaders if not for the fact of English colonies in the West Indies and the African slave tradein support of those colonies.These portraits -- like Reynolds’ of Omai -- function as ideological and moral statements that savagesare ennobled when cast in the mold of classical oratory, or that the nobility of noble savages is mostclearly revealed when they are so represented. However, as Olive Dickason has demonstrated,European discourses about new-world peoples always made European points and served Europeanends: when the nature of the assumptions governing those discourses changed, so did therepresentation of the native. In France during the colonial period, for example, “as the negative andpositive views on Amerindians polarized and crystallized, the one upholding their superior virtuebecame chiefly a literary and theoretical position, while the one downgrading them became the guidefor practical politics (Dickason, Myth of the Savage 2). Dickason’ s point illustrates Said’s conceptof “flexible positional superiority” (Orientalism 7); Aboriginal peoples could be invested with nobility-- as in the portraits of “chiefs” like Omai and Tu [figures 1.4 and 1.5] -- but the Europeans whogranted it could just as easily take it away when their priorities changed. For example, Smith hasargued, convincingly I think, that Webber’s training in drawing human figures from the models ofGreek sculpture as the ideal form of a “common human stereotype” did not prevent him from making“clear ethnic distinctions” both among Pacific peoples and between Pacific peoples and Europeans(IP 184).It is quite misleading to say, as it so often is, that because [Webber] was European50FIGURE 1.4 Omai, panel by William Hodges. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and theSouth Pacific, plate 12, p. 96.-—51FIGURE 1.5 Portrait of Ta, by John Webber. Reproduced from RUdiger Joppien and BernardSmith, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery, 1 77’- 1780 (Melbourne: Oxford UniversityPress, 1987), plate 69, p. 61.52he painted the native peoples of the Pacific to look like Europeans. . . . ethnic varietywas depicted within the overriding Enlightenment conviction that all nations weremembers of one great human family, though some may have degenerated, as a resultof dispersion and the effects of climate, from that perfection which had been attainedby the European. So far as Cook’s artists were concerned, the concept of race, whichwas to have such devastating effects on non-European peoples, had not yet emerged.(Smith, IF 47)However, the change in eighteenth-century English Christian thought from deism and neo-classicalismto Calvinistic validations of austerity and fortitude ‘did much to spread the belief that the nativepeoples of the Pacific in their natural state were depraved and ignoble” (Smith, EVSP 5). In the sameway, as European intellectual notions and priorities changed as a cause and result of imperialism,people who “had been portrayed like gods came to be portrayed like monkeys” [as in figure 1.6, froman edition of Cook’s journals published in 1906] (Smith, IF 62).These representations -- or presentations, perhaps, since as Mason notes of anthropology, “thisdiscourse does not recreate, but it creates” (14) -- are more complex than the binary oppositionsbetween civilisation and savage, or between noble and bloodthirsty savages, suggests. In her analysisof Reynolds’ full-length portrait of Omai, Harriet Guest moves beyond a discussion of the seemingappropriation of the strange culture of the Pacific by presenting a “souvenir” (Guest 104) of Cook’svoyage according to the already-established European discourse of Orientalism; instead, she exploresthe exoticism of the image.The figure may be marked by a specifically colonialist curiosity that perceives theislander in terms that resist generalization, or maybe even representation. It mayconstruct -- through what is concealed as well as what is discovered to the spectator’sgaze -- a focus or standard for judgement that privileges the exoticism rather than theOrientalism of the image. (Guest 102)Like Orientalism, exoticism is a discourse which has particular uses for European culture: it “inscribesits object with an acultural illegibility, isolated from any coherence of origin. Exoticized subjects arecharacterized as sports, marked as singular tokens lacking any significance beyond that of fragmentary53j:FIGURE 1.6 A few of the natives brandished spears,by Will Robinson. Reproduced from Bernard Smith,Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the CookVoyages (New Haven, Conn. and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1992), plate 55, p. 62.54and unrepresentative (perhaps unrepresentable) insularity’ (Guest 102).This exoticism, Guest argues, is suggested by the tattoos marking Omai’ s hands in Reynolds’portrait; they are “incompatible with any patrician authority his posture [and classical draperies] mightseem to imply. It is as though they indelibly blacken and stain the transparent legibility of thatclassical stance” (106). Instead of situating Omai within the overdetermined discourse of Orientalism,“a wealth of inscrutable detail that it is the perquisite of the knowing European to articulate,”exoticism marks a difference from European mores which is not yet assimilated into Europeanknowledge. Omai, feminised as a spectacle and a curiosity, functions as a blank slate upon whicha “redefinition of European masculinity . . . as marked, distinguished, identified in its cultural orphysical, and national or ethnic differences” can be written (Guest 107). While it may portray Omaias a “sport” or “singular token,” this exoticism also refers to the larger world of his Pacific culture:Omai is simultaneously interesting to a European audience as a representative of that unknown, alienworld, as McCormick’s title -- Omai: Pacific Envoy -- declares.If these kinds of post-colonial analysis assume the application of old-world standards to thenew, a contrasting view is offered by Barbara Maria Stafford in Voyage into Substance. She arguesthat the very difference of the new world necessitated new verbal and visual conventions, free ofcenturies-old associations with classical knowledge and traditions -- in essence, free of oversignification. Much of her argument rests on, or begins with, the competing truth- and value-claimsof Classical and scientific knowledge perhaps best exemplified for the early eighteenth century inSwift’s portrayal of the Antients (sic) and Moderns in his Battle of the Books (1704). A willingnessto privilege the learning and taste of the Ancients was manifested in the desire to imitate the contentand forms of classical literature (as in Pope’s Imitations of Horace [1733 and 1734]), as well as inthe desire to collect seventeenth-century landscape paintings by Claude and Poussin.55A Digression, concerninz GardensThe landscape paintings of Claude and Poussin presented “idealized versions of thecountryside around Rome [and] established an intricate relationship of water, distant hills,buildings (especially the effect of ruins or the formal contrasts of square and round temples),bridges and trees.” Like the “more turbulent vision of the Neapolitan artist, Salvator Rosa”(whose importance can be seen as late as 1794 in the frequent references made to him by MrsRadcliffe in The Mysteries of Udoipho), Claude and Poussin were “taken as reliableillustrators of Virgil” (Hunt 12). The wealthy landowners who collected such paintings fortheir country-houses worked to transform their grounds to resemble the landscapes of thepaintings. While it is impossible to posit a causal relationship, these paintings “influencedmen’s thinking about natural scenery; [they] shaped [men’s] responses and gave them avocabulary with which to articulate their experience of the new gardening” (Hunt 15).Learning to read the English landscape by means of representations of Italian landscapes alsomediated the experience of English travellers to continental Europe and Italy, as Walpole’scomment on the Alps in 1739 reveals: “Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings,Salvator Rosa” (quoted in Hunt 17).Nature, improved upon and embellished by the designs of Art, was manipulated toprovoke certain moods, meanings, and responses in the observer. The Elysian Fields at Stoweexemplify the complexities of the Picturesque and Associative garden:they require a visitor to compare ancient virtue with its modemcounterpart (a ruined and gothic temple of Modem Virtue wasestablished nearby), to register the political significance of the BritishWorthies, which in turn involved noticing that a line was missing froma Virgilian quotation, and to appreciate that the Temple of Ancient Virtuecalled to mind the Roman Temple of Vesta (the so-called Sybil’s Temple)at Tivoli, and the Temple of British Worthies some other modem Italianexamples. And in these matters of English Augustanism, the assimilationof Classical ideals was not merely a question of ‘imitation’ but of‘translation’, of making Homer (in Pope’s phrase) ‘speak good English’,and of registering the difficulties as well as the opportunities for culturalobligations. (Hunt 33-4)56A garden designed to “promote a series of reflections” and to express emotional states andmoods, influenced by the design and “verbal constructions of associated ideas and meanings”ofpoetry as well as painting, could be ‘read’ by those with the requisite knowledge and sharedtastes shaped by the same education (Hunt 34, 35). The “identification of landscape andevents that take place in them” in the Associative garden was given impetus by theories suchas Locke’s on the workings of the human mind, particularly the notion that ideas are derivedfrom experience of the world as perceived by the senses; the mind transforms images intosimple ideas, which are in turn transformed into more complex patterns (Essay ConcerningHuman Understanding 1690) (Hunt 36).Against the tendency to privilege the form and content of the knowledge of the Ancients, Staffordlinks Locke’s notion of the tabula rasa with the project of exploration and discovery:The entire age was dominated by travelers. Hence the aptness of Michel Foucault’ scomment that the two fundamental perceptual structures of the eighteenth centurywere a child’s being born blind and later receiving sight and a foreign observer’sshock at being thrust into an unknown country. These perceptual experiences alter theprocesses of vision in a way that is possible only when a fundamental discovery ismade. (Stafford 20)Stafford’s concern is this sense of discovery, or newness, and the means of conveying it: inthe representation of a new world, free of the associations of the Associative garden, she identifies“the struggle to find a way to ‘re-present’ reality without the intervention of habit [which] was partof the larger preoccupation with the nature of truth that engaged seventeenth-century thinkers”(Stafford 31). This lengthy quotation reveals the importance Stafford accords this sense of the new,the unfamiliar, and the unknown in her theorising of exploration and discovery:Whether on land, in the air, or upon the seas, from 1760 until the 1830s, we areunavoidably enmeshed in an epoch in which spatial discoveries loom large. And whatis appealing about these innumerable and dangerous adventures is the intensity ofpleasure they convey. The enjoyment and evident relish mirrored in these narratives57is based on the idea that the scientific traveler is usefully, not trivially, engaged. Noone could speak more to the point of utile et dulce than Cook: ‘Was it not for thepleasure which naturly [sic] results to a Man from being the first discoverer even wasit nothing more than sands and shoals, this service would be insuportable [sic]especially in far distant parts, like this [Australia], short of Provisions and almostevery other necessary. The world will hardly admit of an excuse for a man leavinga Coast unexplored he had once discover’d. . . . ‘ (Stafford 25)The importance of Cook’s voyages to this zeitgeist (not to mention the ‘intensity of pleasure” thatresulted from reading, as well as leading, such “dangerous adventures”) cannot be overestimated.However, these are not fantastic voyages: Stafford argues that plain-language accounts of a worldexplored using the methods of empirical science took on aesthetic status, privileging content overform, against established representational conventions, in which new matter was endlessly injectedinto old forms, resulting in something like too much ‘art,’ or artifice, and not quite enough substance.Notwithstanding the explanatory power of all these positions, the post-colonial context (bothhistorical realities and theoretical formulations) means that the mode of representation of the newworld and its inhabitants, whatever its motivation or analysis, cannot be divorced from its effects.In a paper entitled “Janet Schaw and the Aesthetics of Colonialism,” Elizabeth Bohis reads onewoman traveller’s account of the British West Indies through the critical lens of an eighteenth-centuryaesthetic of disinterestedness, which posited that the true perception of beauty occurs onlyindependently of any attachment between observer and observed. In effect, Bohis argued, thisaesthetic vocabulary of detached isolation (well-established, for her purposes, by 1774 and thereforeequally well for mine in 1778) normalised and legitimised a man-made and imperial social order,based on slavery, as natural by presenting it as a tableau. The beauty of various exotic species isdescribed while their utility is glossed over, true in the case of the slaves and their labour as muchas in the case of the flora and fauna. The racial discourse inserted into alluring scenic descriptionsis simultaneously acknowledged and naturalised by the distancing power of the aesthetic. The same58holds true for the first published account of Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, including the monthspent at Nootka Sound.Approaching the Text: the Visual RecordCook’s first and second voyages, although their purposes were primarily scientific (observingthe transit of Venus in 1769, establishing the existence and location of the Great Southern continent),also included artists whose designated role was to represent the new world in pictures. Accordingto Bernard Smith, “under [Cook’s] command the value of visual records was for the first time fullyrecognized and adequately provided for”: in contrast to the “unbelievably small” visual records ofEuropean contact with and conquest of the new world before him, Cook’s three voyages producedapproximately “three thousand original drawings . . . of things, mostly from the Pacific, not seenbefore by Europeans: plants, fish, molluscs, birds, coastlines, landscapes, unknown peoples, their artsand crafts, religious practices and styles of life” (Smith, IP 54).On the third voyage -- the principal purpose of which was to discover whether the elusivenorthern passage, non-navigable from the Atlantic, could be approached from the Pacific -- therepresentative function is paramount in the secret instructions given Cook by the Admiralty:you are . . . to survey, make Charts, and take views of such Bays, Harbours, anddifferent parts of the Coast, and to make such Notations thereon, as may be useful toNavigation or Commerce. You are also carefully to observe the nature of the Soil andthe produce thereof; the Animals & Fowls that inhabit or frequent it; the Fishes thatare to be found in the Rivers or upon the Coast, and in what plenty; and, in case thereare any peculiar to such places, to describe them as minutely, and to make as accuratedrawings of them, as you can . . . . (Beaglehole 111:1, ccxxiii)The North Pacific environment, radically different from the relatively familiar South Pacific,necessitated an even closer attention to detail than usual. One of the artists employed to produce thisvisual record was John Webber, a professional artist trained in Berne and Paris as a landscape and59figure draughtsman (Smith, IF 73) whose 1776 Royal Academy exhibition “caught the attention ofthe organizers of Cook’s voyage” (Tippett 18). Recommended by Daniel Solander (Smith, IF 73),Webber was, in Cook’s words, “pitched upon . . for the express purpose of supplying theunavoidable imperfections of written accounts, by enabling us to preserve, and bring home, suchdrawings of the most memorable of our transactions, as could be expressed by a skilled andprofessional artist” (Douglas I, 5). The other artist was the surgeon’s second mate, William Ellis,who was “employed . . . largely with drawing plants and animals” (Tippett 18).Much more than the artists of the previous voyages, Webber documents life in what MaryLouise Pratt has called the contact zone, “the space of colonial encounters . . . in which peoplesgeographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoingrelations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict”(Imperial Eyes 6). Trained primarily in history painting rather than botanical drawing, Webberproduced not a miscellany of exotica, but a series of ‘set pieces’ for most major landfalls: “encounter”[figures 1.7 and 1.8] and “entertainment” [figure 1.9] paintings, head and shoulder studies of at leastone man and woman and often full-length portraits, as well as ethnographic drawings to providevisual support for Cook’s written descriptions (Smith, IF 73-4). Smith states that Webber’ s“encounter” and “entertainment” paintings “constitute a new kind of history painting. . . a new visualsource for the study of history, and not as in academic history paintings, the retrospective illustrationof a traditional text” (IF 74). Smith and RUdiger Joppien support this claim in their analysis ofWebber’s The Harbour of Annamooka [figure 1.7]:There is a complexity of action and movement which only unfolds itself after a closeexamination. Many studies were necessary to build up a comprehensive scene like thisNot only at Tonga, but at all major ports of call, in Nootka Sound as much asin Kealakekua Bay, Webber observed similar scenes, vignettes of daily life. Thoughhe may not have drawn these regularly at all stations, the fact that occasionally theyare encapsulated in his pictures shows he was aware of them. By them, WebberFIGURE1.7TheHarbourofAnnamooka,byJohnWebber.ReproducedfromJoppien,plate25, p.28.FIGURE1.8TheResolutionandDiscoveryinShipCove,byJohnWebber.ReproducedfromMariaTippettandDouglasCole,FromDesolationtoSplendour:changingPerceptionsoftheBritishColumbiaLandscape(TorontoandVancouver:Clerke,Irwin, &Co.,1977),p.19./_F-,...---Z---.‘-.0\ C61FIGURE 1.9 A Night Dance by Men, in Happaee and A Night Dance by Women, in Happaee,engraving after Webber by W. Sharp. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the SouthPacific, plates 16 and 17, p. 128.62reflected the expedition as a history-making event in itself. To have noticed andunderstood this is a new element among the body of visual representations fromCook’s voyages . . . . Furthermore each incident depicted is given much the sameweight in Webber’s drawings, indeed his presentation is so impartial we cannot besure which of the two British officers in the foreground is Cook. Webber’s tendencyto demonstrate the complexity of action is historical in an eventful and documentarysense but it is also anti-heroic. (Joppien 28)Much of this commentary is applicable to the other encounter painting reproduced in figure 1.8, whichalso narrates events typical of landing: an Englishman, presumably but not explicitly Cook, extendshis hand toward a group of natives, while the crew is occupied with such activities as wooding,watering, and trading.Webber’ s use of the codes of history painting has profound consequences for the encounterscenes in particular, constituting an ideological claim more potentially transformative of bothEuropean and Pacific societies than either portraits or engravings. Simply stated, history paintingoccupied the top of the hierarchy of art forms established by the Royal Academy.By means of its idealizing forms, and through its depiction of heroic deeds, historypainting promoted the public virtues, those associated with wise and disinterestedstatesmanship, or perhaps most closely with martial valour. Such an art called uponits viewers to rise above their particular, private concerns to a level of superiorawareness, from where they could identify and further the common good. The theoryof history painting presupposed the existence of a body of male spectators who couldbe capable of this act of transcendence . . . . (Solkin 2)Such an emphatically public mode not only visually states the importance -- historical, economic, andmoral -- of the events portrayed, but it also locates them in a set of power relations as a mode‘tailored to the needs of a ruling elite,” particularly a landed elite (501km 3).This understanding of history painting is essential to locating the concerns of Webber’ sResolution and Discovery in Ship Cove [figure 1.81.It shows the cove from the western shore as if taken by a modern wide-angle lens.The drawing, besides depicting the two ships inside the cove, includes the usualactivities of the crew, wooding, watering and trading. On the beach sailors areoccupied rolling barrels to a landing stage, and a couple of blacksmiths are forging63fittings for the mast. In the central background, guarded by a sentry, the twoastronomers’ tents have been erected and observations are being made. The ships,which are here drawn unusually large in scale, are encircled by Nootkans in canoes,who trade and converse with the members of the crew. (Joppien 80)Joppien and Smith’s analysis of the drawing -- the largest Webber produced on the voyage-- putsit in the context of European examples of paintings uniting historical and topographic genres, inwhich the “geographical and commercial components of both land and sea are drawn together intoa hub of human activity” (Joppien 80). The problem facing Webber was not the depiction of standardlandfall activities (which, two years into the voyage, he must have witnessed many times, after all),but instead that of locating these activities in a strange landscape:The drawing represents a time at low tide, as is revealed by other drawings whichshow the Astronomer’s Rock surrounded and partially submerged by water.. . . Thetime was well chosen for it allowed Webber to depict the bay to advantage, with itsrough, irregular shoreline. The east side is shown broken into sections of rock,overgrown by moss, small trees and shrubs; above the beach, a thick apparentlyimpenetrable forest, with many trees felled by the heavy coastal gales. (Joppien 80)This drawing, like The Harbour of Annamooka, is “complex and anti-heroic” in that theviewer cannot identify Cook as the hero and central figure who gives the narrative meaning -- incontrast to history paintings like Edward Penny’s The Marquis of Granby Relieving a Sick Soldier(1764) [figure 1.101, which unites the narrative codes of history painting with the conversation-piece.Penny composed his Marquis of Granby around a series of gestures and glanceswhich link the figures together in a relational continuum. Their various connectionsall hinge upon Granby himself. . . . [through a composition] which separates thecentral actor from the surrounding figures, who are shown responding to him and notto one another. (Solkin 5-7)Penny has transported the generally private realm of the conversation-piece into the public realm ina narrative which presents a public man doing private good and exercising private virtues --benevolence, charity, generosity -- for the public good: the sick soldier so relieved will return to hisregiment with greater respect for and loyalty to his commanding officer(s), as will the soldiers on theFIGURE 1.10 The Marquis of Granby Relieving a Sick Soldier, by Edward Penny. Reproducedfrom Solkin, Portraiture in Motion” (Huntington Library Quarterly 14.1 [Winter 1986]), fig. 1,p.4.64r65far left who witness Granby’ s morality in action.What might be “the most famous history painting” (Ricou 171), Benjamin West’s The Deathof Wolfe (1770) [figure 1.11], also presents a contrast to Webber’s drawing. West’s painting initiallyseems to emphasise “reportage” of an historical event rather than its presentation in the Grand Stylebecause he has chosen “the actual uniforms of British soldiers” instead of the classical draperiesReynolds thought appropriate to heroic subject matter (Vaughan 58). In fact, Ricou argues, “the useof contemporary costume has given the painting the reputation of historical accuracy” (174-5).Yet this actuality is only superficial. It clothes a composition which bears norelation to the circumstances of Wolfe’s death. In the best tradition of the grandmanner, everything enhances the central theme. The group with the dying hero --looking for all the world like a Christian Pietà -- is flanked by sorrowing officers.(Most of these were nowhere near Wolfe at the time, but paid West £100 each to havetheir portraits included.) The gravitas of their grief culminates in the drooping pennantthat is held above the protagonist. Even the elements pay tribute, for the storm cloudsare being dispelled by the English victory, indicated by the messenger who bursts in,in the nick of time, from the left. In the foreground the artist lapses into pure allegorywith a fictive Indian who, apart from providing some regulation nudity, alsosymbolizes the place and also, with his pensive stance, the mood of the occasion.(Vaughan 59)Here the similarity of this painting to, and its relevance for, the art of Cook’s voyages becomes clear.The presentation of this apotheosis -- General Wolfe’s death almost at the moment of England’svictory over France on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, a victory which ended the Seven Years’ War-- as a history painting has the effect of making “colonial wars of expansion seem truly heroic”(Vaughan 58). As Ricou notes, this presentation has come to stand for the event: “for every personwho has studied -- who even recalls dimly -- the documented facts about the battle of the Plains ofAbraham, there will likely be thousands whose minds are imprinted with West’s sturdily popularrepresentation. West made mythology of history instantly” (173) -- which, whether understood ashistory or as mythology, is specifically imperial. (Indeed, Ricou’ s analysis suggests the ways West’sself-promotion mirrors the economic motivations governing imperial expansion). Barry Lord’s66FIGURE 1.11 The Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West. Reproduced from Helmut vonErifa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, Conn. and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1986), p. 58.67summary of the painting’s imperial symbolism, which Ricou footnotes, is relevant here:In neo-classical history paintings like West’s, they [the British aristocrats] could seetheir dying generals as martyrs in a cause that was both British and Christian, andenvisage their empire as carrying on some abstract values that they attributed to theempires of the ancient past . . . . The martyr may be dying, but Britannia hasprevailed. (Quoted in Ricou 184)This statement easily applies to any number of the paintings and engravings of the death of CaptainCook; it also applies, equally easily, to Webber’ s topographic paintings.Because he fuses the topographic genre with the historic, the effect in Webber’s Resolutionand Discovery in Ship Cove is almost the opposite of Granby’s and West’s paintings. The drawingis dominated visually not by Cook the hero but by the ships, “drawn unusually large in scale,” in theright foreground, while on the left side the puny human figures -- almost stick-men -- of theforeground are dwarfed by the irregular rocks and lofty pines of the middle ground. Landfallactivities are discernible, but the figures engaging in them are not. In this drawing, the voyage itselfbecomes the hero, the (imperial) subject, as signalled by the enormous flag almost the size of theship’s hull, and the potential economic profits to be realised by European traders as a result of thisvoyage. The Nootkan canoes may not equal the size of the European ship, but there are many ofthem, filled with Indians presumably eager to trade.In contrast to Webber’ s historical paintings, Ellis’ work (like that of Parkinson in particularbut to a certain extent like that of Hodges also) can be viewed in the scientific tradition of theLinnaean taxonomy. Laid out in the Systema Natura, first published in 1735, this “descriptive systemdesigned to classify all the plants on the earth, known and unknown, according to the characterisiticsof their reproductive parts” took definite shape in the Philosophia Botanica (1751) and the SpeciesPlanetarum (1753) (Pratt, IE 24-5). Using the code of the twenty-six basic configurations of theirreproductive parts (identified according to the letters of the alphabet) and the visual characteristics68of number, form, position, and relative size, any plant anywhere could be first of all identified, thennamed, and later recognised on the basis of that name. In theory at least, “it would be possible foranyone who had learned the system to place any plant in the world in its right class and order, if notin its right genus, whether the plant was previously known to science or not” (Pratt, IE 27). Inpractice, written descriptions and drawings often accompanied the Linnaean label (which remains thestandard form of botanical nomenclature). Although originally designed as a system to classifyplants, its methodology was extended into the animal kingdom (as exemplified by figure 1.12, Ellis’study of a butcher bird): “as a result of Linnaeus’s influence, empirical forms of naturalism weredeveloped in the visual arts to assist in the provision of a systematic account of nature and of manby means of a connected group of descriptive sciences: botany, zoology, meteorology, geography,geology, archaeology and anthropology” (Smith, IP 51).So far, I have distinguished between aesthetic and scientific discourses in the art of the thirdvoyage by associating the former with Webber and the latter with Ellis. However, the distinctionbetween the two is not so clear. In European Vision and the South Pacific, Smith argues thatexposure to the work and methods of the nautical draughtsmen meant that the professional artists’“mode of perception became increasingly less dominated by neo-classical theories of art andincreasingly more influenced by empirical habits of vision” (3). However, what Smith has called“empirical habits of vision” needs some clarification. The issue is not merely one of drawing whatone sees -- rather, what does one see, and how does one see it? A case in point is provided by thelandscapes of Nootka Sound produced by the neo-classically trained Webber in contrast to those ofthe scientifically-trained Ellis, educated in medicine at St. Bartholemew’ s, Cambridge (Tippett 22).“Unlike Webber, whose Swiss background undoubtedly provided him with a schemata for coniferousfoliage, Ellis drew trees in the only way he knew how” (Tippett 22), as he had learned to draw themFIGURE 1.12 Butcher Bird caught at sea, and otherdrawings, by William Ellis. Reproduced fromJoppien, plate 204, p. 209.69; .:‘b’4//•‘H:1-7.21 w. f.77Wtt(I-- -i70FIGURE 1.13 The Fan Palm, in the Island ofCracatoa, coloured aqautint by John Webber.Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and theSouth Pacific, plate 74, p. 111.71,‘‘dr.i1II _L..___ ‘ / -f,.:Z’ “FIGURE 1.14 A View of Ship Cove in King George’s Sound on the N. W. Coast of America, byWilliam Ellis. Reproduced from Tippett, p. 19.72at home in England or over the course of the voyage in the South Pacific. Accordingly, Ellis’drawings transplant the background trees of the South Seas to Nootka Sound (as comparing figures1.13 and 1.14 reveals). How, then, in the absence of known referents, whether those of Europe orthose of the South Pacific, do European conventions perceive and represent not only the new worldin general, but more particularly the newer newness of Nootka Sound?Smith’s point about something like the cross-pollination of visual genres bears closer scrutiny,in reference to figure 1.8, Webber’s The Resolution and Discovery in Ship Cove, and to figure 1.14,Ellis’ View of Ship Cove in King George’s Sound, on the N.W. Coast of America, 1778. AlthoughEllis was the artist employed to produce drawings of flora and fauna, in practice the history painterWebber produced the botanical detail of coniferous trees much more accurately-- that is to say, hecould do it. Smith notes that “few water-colour painters of Webber’ s day sought out the minutiaeof vegetation with the same zeal,” tending instead to treat “foregrounds and distances withconsiderable freedom” (EVSP 109). Ellis’ background trees provide a bushy green backdrop framingthe real subject of a drawing; in contrast, Webber “renders botanical detail with care and accuracyup to the limits of his frame” (EVSP 109). Ironically, the professional artist violates the codes ofhistory painting by sacrificing the general for the particular, while the scientist produces a genericbackground instead of the accurate botanical detail expected of natural history drawings. In the visualrecord of Nootka Sound produced by the artists of the third voyage, the pictorial codes and demandsof contemporary aesthetics and science cannot be easily divorced. Instead, they inform and respondto each other as the artists of Cook’s third voyage struggled to represent the unfamiliar landscape ofNootka Sound.73But Let Us Return to Our MuttonsWhen suggesting Cook’s initial response to the west coast of present-day Vancouver Islandin his Lfe of Cook, Beaglehole describes the coast using the vocabulary of the Sublime. The islandis “built on vast proportions”; “the spruce and hemlock and cedar of the forest cover it, to within afew feet of the sea”; “trees spring, it seems, from each individual solid rock”; land meets sea abruptly,falling “precipitous to the water, with only here and there a narrow strip of land marching with it, ora larger ledge.” While such comments may (in the late twentieth century) be read as appreciative,could Cook and his party, in 1778, have felt such admiration for the place? The Sublime in natureis comparable to a horror film: the frisson of pleasure received by a transcendental awareness ofhuman insignificance in relation to the works of Nature is either momentary-- dependent on a returnto normal consciousness, mercifully forgetful of human puniness -- or vicarious, more readilyexperienced by a reading public thrilling to the dangers of exploration from the safety of an armchairby a fireplace, dinner on the table nearby. The Picturesque presents a more comfortable vision ofhuman relations with the natural world: a Picturesque landscape results from, and therefore invites,retroactively, human habitation.Stafford’s account of the importance of the Sublime for a vocabulary of exploration locatesit within a psychological framework: “the emphasis placed in the factual travel accounts on descentinto mines or caverns tallies with the psychological desire to plumb sublimely dangerous depths”(353). This desire is a feature of both the individual and collective psyche, an expression of aEuropean cultural model.Energetic spatial metaphors -- tearing, crossing, immersing, penetrating -- structurethe images of the factual relations. All mirror the explorer’s Promethean endeavor, toconquer space by duplicating the fluid processes of the universe revealed byeighteenth-century entropic materialism. The issue of the individual consciousnesslocating itself outside itself bears on the varieties of the Sublime (rhetorical, natural,religious) enumerated in antiquity and compellingly recast by Edmund Burke. In74Longinus’ definition of hypsos, or height, the reader is ‘uplifted’ as though hephysically undergoes what he merely hears. That is, the encounter with artisticexcellence (the ‘rhetorical Sublime’) is structurally cognate with the livedtranscendence excited in the observer during the meeting with landscape (the ‘naturalSublime’). (Stafford 353)Stafford’s list of verbs in the first sentence of this quotation hints at the gendered associations of theSublime and Picturesque. Not surprisingly, the Sublime is considered supremely masculine,particularly in the form of mountain ranges like the Alps. She cites the Comte de Guibert’s commentthat “a voyage to the Pyrenees may give women [like Ann Radcliffe, for example] some idea of theessence of mountains, but ‘a man, a man who desires to know, a man who ought to prefer greatmasses to details & superb horrors to the charms of a landscape . . . must prefer to go observe andstudy nature in the Alps” (360). While Stafford suggests that water and air may form the feminineequivalent to masculine geological formations, it is important to note that Sublime paintings -- likeClaude Vernet’ s (1714-89) “pictures of natural disasters, especially shipwrecks”-- focussed on thehorrifyingly destructive power of the ocean (Vaughan 36).Tippett and Cole describe the move from the Picturesque to the Sublime landscape northwardsalong the western coastline of North America: “the coastline of Washington and Oregon, with itsextensive prospects, gradual variation and diversity of woods and meadows, provided a closeapproximation to the artfully landscaped beauty of English parks,” and as such its beauty was easilyrecognised (Tippett 15). Moving further up the coast, however,no such artful arrangements were evident. The foreshore of today’s British Columbiadisappeared as the mountains rose directly from the sea, creating steep cliffs arounddeep inlets. No longer were there gently ascending hills chequered with variedwoodlands, but only conifer-clad mountains rising precipitously above the snowline.The scene lacked all the qualities of the familiar and beautiful. No greater departurefrom the sensitively arranged nobleman’s park could be imagined.The British Columbia coast loomed silent and desolate, enveloped by huge androcky mountains, filled with raging waterfalls and tempestuous weather and frequentlyobscured by mists and fogs [causing Cook to miss Juan de Fuca Strait]. While thisshoreline appeared neither pleasing nor beautiful to the early explorers, it could75provide the refined mind of the age with a suitable setting for a study of the sublimein nature. (Tippett 15-7)“The refined mind of the age” (with the notable exception of Banks) was less likely to be found onthe quarter-deck of a voyage of exploration than to be reading the published account of the voyagefrom the safety of home. There, in its aristocratic guise it was creating (“by an immoderate expencein manual labour,” as Vancouver put it [MacLaren, “Aesthetic Mapping of Nature” 40], sometimesto the extent of demolishing or moving entire villages to improve the view from the Palladian countryhouse [Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century 57, 60]) and in its bourgeois or middle-classguise touring the Picturesque landscape garden, in addition to collecting or admiring the paintings ofClaude, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa, or gazing in awe at the Alps.These are the aesthetic currents and preoccupations of the time, and their influence onexploration narratives of the area after Cook is obvious. The journal of George Vancouver’s voyageto the northwest coast some fifteen years later makes clear that he “deployed the narrative conventionsfor the appreciation of nature that adhered to the landscape aesthetics of [his] day -- the Picturesqueand the Sublime,” as MacLaren argues in “The Aesthetic Mapping of Nature”:Vancouver was exploring during the age when the fashionable Englishman toured hiscountry in search of landscapes whose vegetation framed them and whose naturaldeclination from foreground to middle ground and whose inclination from middleground to background reminded him of a painting style then in vogue . . . . Thesalient feature of this style was that landforms, vegetation, atmosphere and the naturalplay of light and shade on terrain produced a unified, composed landscape effectwhich either evinced or invited leisurely habitation. (40)Because the Puget Sound region reminded him so strongly not only of the landscape paintings ofClaude but also of the landscape gardens of ‘Capability’ Brown, Vancouver “confidently asserted itssuitability for British settlement and prophesied its evolution into a landscape mecca. It was to himwhat James Cook had designated the region generally-- a New Albion” (MacLaren, “AMN” 40).However, north of present-day Vancouver, B.C., Vancouver’s crew moved abruptly from the76Picturesque to the Sublime, signalled by such place names as ‘Desolation Sound’ and ‘Burke’s Inlet’(for Edmund Burke): “thus, in a single season’s surveying, Vancouver and his men had run the gamutof eighteenth-century British landscape aesthetics’ (MacLaren, “AMN” 41).But how real or important were these aesthetic questions to Cook, fifteen years earlier andon the other coast of Vancouver Island? Did he perceive the landscape he discovered according tosuch aesthetic notions as the Sublime or the Picturesque? The description of the landscape of NootkaSound in the first published edition of Cook’s journals, edited by Dr Douglas, occurs in Chapter 2of Book Four of the second volume, a backward glance while the narrative of the journey freezes inits tracks. Cook has already exchanged parting gifts with one of the Chiefs and the ships have beenescorted out of the Sound (with what Douglas, if not Cook, presents as a standing invitation to comeback and trade for pelts) at the end of the previous chapter, which concludes thus:Such particulars about the country, and its inhabitants, as came to our knowledge,during our short stay, and have not been mentioned in the course of the narrative, willfurnish material for the two following chapters. (Douglas II, 287)The forward movement of the ships is textually suspended in a bizarre cliffhanger, validating theconcept of eighteenth-century travel as science. The chapter heading on the next page promises an“Account of the adjacent Country.--Weather.--Climate.--Trees.--Other vegetable Productions.-Quadrupeds . . . . --Sea Animals.-- . . . . --Birds.--Water Fowl.--Fish.--Shellfish,&c.--Reptiles.-Insects.--Stones,&c.--Persons of the Inhabitants” (Douglas II, 288), the form as much as the contentof this summary calling to mind the Dictionary or Encyclopaedia of knowledge so important toEnglightenment universalism.This list -- as chapter heading -- also calls into question the production of Cook’s journal asa text, since Cook (despite Beaglehole’ s suggestion that Cook wrote the journals of the third voyagewith an eye to editing them for publication himself [“Cook the Writer” 1 8j) did not divide his running77journals into Books and Chapters, and consequently provided no such chapter headings. Douglas’edition thus puts the reader at two removes from the narrative. He presents a Cook who divides hisjournals into Books and Chapters with appropriate headings, as if according to a Master Plan, sincethe title page of the edition does not mention Douglas or even an editor: Volumes I and II, itpromises, are “written by Captain JAMES COOK, F.R.S.” Douglas also presents an event whichhappens in the present tense as if it happened in the past: the first-person narrator looks back atNootka Sound to catalogue its particulars, almost as if describing an emotion recollected intranquillity.The first description of Nootka Sound in Douglas’ edition of Cook’s journals presents it asa Sublime landscape:The land bordering upon the sea coast is of a middling height and level; but withinthe Sound, it rises almost every where into steep hills, which agree in their generalformation, ending in round or blunted tops, with some sharp, though not veryprominent, ridges on their sides. Some of these hills may be reckoned high, whileothers of them are of a very moderate height; but even the highest are entirelycovered to their tops with the thickest woods; as well as every flat part toward thesea. There are sometimes spots upon the sides of some of the hills which are bare; butthey are few, in comparison of the whole, though they sufficiently point out thegeneral rocky disposition of these hills. Properly speaking, they have no soil uponthem, except a kind of compost, produced from rotten mosses and trees, of the depthof two feet or more. Their foundations are, therefore, to be considered as nothingmore than stupendous rocks, of a whitish or grey cast, where they have been exposedto the weather; but, when broken, they appeared to be of a bluish grey colour, likethat universal sort which were found at Kerguelen’s Land. The rocky shore are acontinued mass of this; and the little coves, in the Sound, have beaches composed offragments of it, with a few other pebbles. All these coves are furnished with a greatquantity of fallen wood lying in them, which is carried in by the tide; and the rills offresh water, sufficient for the use of a ship, which seem to be supplied entirely fromthe rains and fogs that hover about the top of the hills. For few springs can beexpected in so rocky a country, and the fresh water found further up the Sound, mostprobably arose from the melting of the snow; there being no room to suspect, that anylarge river falls into the Sound, either from strangers coming down it, or from anyother circumstance. The water of these rills is perfectly clear, and dissolves soapeasily. (Douglas II, 289-90)In fact, Douglas’ description of the Sound reads almost like a description of a painting: he begins by78noting the middle and background (the forest which overwhelms the eye as the consciousness isoverwhelmed not so much by the height of the hills as by the “rocky disposition” and the wildnessof the scene), then moving down through the middle ground (noticing the “bare spots” on the hills,a contrast which serves to highlight that they are indeed covered with trees), toward the foreground,where particulars regarding the soil, rocks, and trees can be distinguished. The reference toKerguelen’ s Land, another landscape of barren slopes and rocks of primarily geological interest[figure 1.151, highlights the sublimity of Nootka Sound (so inhospitable to the eyes of later explorers),presented in the image of rocky mountains, bristling with trees almost down to the water. These“stupendous rocks” in turn are described as if according to aesthetic rather than scientific norms,classified by colour or hue (“whitish” or “bluish grey”) instead of by mineral content or geologicalformation (for example, granite or slate). The repeated use of a word like “rill,” which sounds likean import from a pastoral poem (the passionate shepherd and his love recline beside the gentle nil),to describe the antithesis of the torrents to be expected in such a mountainous landscape marks thetransition from the aesthetic to more scientific, practical considerations and hypotheses regarding thesource of fresh water.Douglas’ role as editor here is obvious if we compare his lengthy passage with the comparablemoment in Beaglehole:The land bordering upon the Sea coast is of a middling height and level, but about theSound it consists of high hills and deep Vallies, for the most part cloathed with largetimber, such as Spruce fir and white Cedar. The more inland Mountains were coveredwith Snow, in other respects they seemed to be naked. (Beaglehole 111:1, 309)This description seems almost to exemplify Thomas Sprat’s notion of scientific writing, defined inhis History of the Royal Society (1667) against the metaphoric style he abhors: “the only Remedy,that can be found for this Extravagance . . . [has been] a constant Resolution, to reject all theAmplifications, Digressions, and Swellings of Style; to return back to the primitive Purity and79FIGURE 1.15 A View up the Valley. . . from Matavai-Bay, by William Ellis. Reproduced fromJoppien, plate 71, p. 62.80Shortness, when men deliver’d so many Things, almost in an equal number of Words” (Sprat 113).Of course Sprat’ s ideal mimetic style, as much as the metaphoric style he sought to replace, is aconvention, at best easier said than done and at wors± impossible to achieve. Since verbal and visualrepresentations can never be purely mimetic, it follows that Cook, or his ghostwriter Douglas, cannothope to portray the new world accurately: language is not transparent, nor is any representationdocumentary.5The passage from Beaglehole’ s edition of Cook’s journals gives little sense of an aestheticresponse to Nootka Sound as a Sublime landscape on Cook’s part. In contrast, Douglas rewrites andexpands Cook’s description using the vocabulary of the Sublime, probably borrowing from thejournals of other officers. Beaglehole’s ‘Textual Introduction” to the third volume of the Voyagesdiscusses the extent to which Douglas does so.Douglas makes great use of Anderson, who might almost go on the title page as athird author. He is quoted where Cook quoted or made provision for quoting him; andelsewhere, often for pages at a time, is worked skilfully into sentences and paragraphs,with or without attribution, has separate chapters allotted to him, or is given largeparts of other chapters with some such introduction as ‘observations . . . combinedwith those of Mr. Anderson, who was a very useful assistant on all such occasions.’(Beaglehole 111:1, cci)One such interpolation is found in the description of Nootka Sound (pages 288 to 340 in Douglas’edition), which begins:In drawing up the preceding account of the people of this Sound, I have occasionallyblended Mr. Anderson’s observations with my own; but I owe everything to him thatrelates to their language; and the following remarks are in his own words. (DouglasII, 334)Douglas -- for nothing remotely resembling this paragraph appears in Beaglehole’ s edition at the samejuncture -- then proceeds to quote Anderson directly for the next two pages. Unfortunately, the partof Anderson’s journal which would contain his account of Nootka Sound is lost, so the extent towhich Douglas borrowed from Anderson, and the nature of those borrowings, remains unclear,681although the correspondences between the existing two-thirds of Anderson’s journal and Douglas’edition makes Anderson’s contribution to the published Voyage clear:For the passage out to the Cape, indeed until we come in sight of Kerguelen, we learnfar more from Anderson than we do from Cook. Thereafter, as exploration becomesthe main business, he in his turn becomes the subordinate but invaluable partner inobservation and recording, with interests and emphases of his own, like Banks on thefirst voyage or Wales on the second. (Beaglehole 111:1, cxci)So it may be to Anderson that Douglas owes his description of Nootka Sound as Sublime. Certainlyof the remaining officers’ accounts, only King’s hints at such an aesthetic response, using suchemotionally-loaded adjectives as “melancholy” and “wild & savage” to characterise the scene asrepellently Sublime.The land round the Sound is very much broken into high precipices & deepChasms; all parts of which are wooded, & continue so down to the water side, wherethe shore is steep & rocky; the few level spots one meets with, are only bogs &swamps, & the whole has a melancholy appearance; not even the noise or mark ofAnimals or birds are here either to be seen or heard to give some little animation tothe woods of King Georges Sound. The high mountains which rise on the back & farinland are many of them bare, & serve to heighten & finish the Picture of as wild &savage a Country as can be well drawn in so temperate a climate . . . . (King 1402)The majority of the other officers’ accounts echo Cook’s description of Nootka Sound aspresented in Beaglehole’ s edition, emphasising not aesthetic but economic considerations andrevealing more about the concerns of the writer in question than they reveal about the landscape. Forexample, the American marine corporal, John Ledyard, responds to and describes Nootka Sound bylisting the products of the country. He concludes with a sentence presumably motivated by his desireto return to this coast, and his anxiety to convince possible sponsors of the profitability of such anexpedition: “The light in which this country will appear most to advantage respects the variety of itsanimals, and the richness of their fur” (Ledyard 70). The other Captain, Charles Clerke, concentrateson the “vast abundance of excellent Timber”:indeed, the whole face of the Country is cover’d with it, both Hills & Dales. The82wood in general is Fir, there are different kinds of it, and such a variety of sizes, thatin going a very inconsiderable distance, you may cut Sticks of every gradation, froma Main Mast for your Ship, to one for your Jolly Boat; and these I suppose as goodas any as are to be procur’d in any part of the World. (Clerke 1323)Clerke sees not a gloomy, silent forest, but a do-it-yourself lumberyard in the fine stands of timber,there for the cutting and certainly cheaper than masts “procur’d in [miany part[s] of the World.”In similar fashion, notwithstanding the cult of the Sublime, Cook’s description in Douglas’edition also reflects an eminent practicality. The previous chapter recounted the difficulties ofreplacing a rotten mizen-mast; it is therefore impossible for Cook to see the forest only as desolateand forbidding. It also must represent a useful stand of timber to be put to use profitably. The waterof the rills may not be as plentiful as desired, the source might be unsure, but even so, it is “perfectlyclear” (unlike rain water collected in barrels in the middle of the ocean, with an unpleasant taste fromthe tar of the rigging) and soft, since it “dissolves soap easily.”This passage from Douglas’ edition sets up what I have called the conjunction of aestheticand scientific discourses. The passage describing Nootka Sound is followed by an account of theproducts of the country and their implied use-value to Cook’s party, England, or science/knowledgein general. Here the text demonstrates the conjunction of the Sublime (aesthetic) and pragmatic(scientific) readings of the landsëape: descriptions of particulars which hint at or recall the generalsublimity of the area in their very limitations, simultaneously provide an opportunity for the editorcontinually to remind his readers that they are holding a work of science in their hands. All thespecies and varieties, whether of plants, land and sea animals, or birds of land and water, are limitedin some way. Two-thirds of the forest are composed of two sorts of trees, the Canadian pine and thewhite cypress, and “there is but little variety of other vegetable productions” (Douglas II, 291).“Birds, in general, are not only rare as to different species, but very scarce as to numbers” (DouglasII, 296, 297). Fish “are more plentiful in quantity than birds, though the variety is not very great”83(Douglas II, 298). Snakes and eels are the only reptiles observed, while ‘the insect tribe seem to bemore numerous’ (Douglas II, 300). The point is repeatedly made that this landscape supports littlein the way of animal life, let alone human diversity. Even in the midst of this language of limitationand/or imprecision (characterised by “one or two,” “a few,” and “some”), however, the reader iscontinually reminded that this is a voyage of scientific discovery. Only those products of the countryactually seen are reported, while Cook makes attempts to determine under what seasonal or weatherconditions other species might be found; early spring, for example, is not the best time fordetermining the abundance of vegetable varieties the countryside might produce.From Aesthetics to ScienceCook’s own description of Nootka Sound, as Beaglehole’s edition reveals, is marked by thetropes of descriptive science, or perhaps of common-sense: looking to replace the main and mizenmasts, Cook sees an uncommonly fine stand of timber likely to produce many possible choices.Douglas, however, transforms the plain non-metaphoric language of the log books and journals withhis own “amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style.” In so doing, he produces the landscapeof Nootka Sound for European readers using aesthetic and scientific discourses as interdependentrather than mutually exclusive, each relying on the supposedly disinterested or objective perceptionof beauty or truth. Douglas presents his own particular vision, imposing the distance not onlybetween ship and shore, but also the distance between his armchair in England and this unknowncoast, and he presents this vision as if it were Truth by way of documentary. With Cook’s name onthe title page of the published edition as the guarantor of scientific credibility, Douglas’ metaphoricand rhetorical description of Nootka Sound is received by his audience as mimetic or transparent.84If the published account presents Douglas’ subjective opinion as objective truth, what aboutthe drawings meant to serve as visual correctives to the written account? Although “the landscapearound Nootka Sound could well be seen as an epitome of the sublime” (Joppien 81), Webber doesnot portray it as such. As Tippett notes, “if awe-struck or melancholy when contemplating thelandscape, he does not convey this emotion onto paper. He is too busy with Nootka types, withinteriors of Yuquot houses, with the variety of exotic artifacts, even with a captured sea otter, toconcern himself with an essentially forlorn and repellent landscape” (21). Perhaps the codes ofhistory painting allow him to present the narrative details of the time spent at the Sound (a monthencapsulated into one painterly moment) and to “discharge his documentary and topographicalresponsibilities as voyage artist” as painting a Sublime landscape would not (Joppien 81). Compare,for example, A View of Ship Cove [figure 1.8] to the more obviously Sublime landscape representedin A View of Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen Island [figure 1.16], where “for the sake of animation[Webber] added a flock of penguins and some sailors landing on the shore. The contrast betweenhumans and animals could not more explicitly evoke an atmosphere of desolation” (Joppien 5).Webber’s history painting of Nootka Sound achieves, in his “ability to present people not as heroes[as in classical naturalism] but as members of communities who take on the colour and mood of theirenvironment,” a new kind of “art as information”: he represents the newness of the new world in anew way (Smith, IP 76). This conjunction of aesthetic and scientific discourses in Webber’ s art isparticularly crucial at Nootka Sound, where the Sublime landscape is considered to be of less exoticinterest than its inhabitants:Webber, like other Europeans, was entranced by the exotic and curious, which atNootka meant Indians and not, as in the South Pacific, a strange landscape and flora.The village of Yuquot . . . was of far greater pictorial interest than the monotonousforest and bare mountains. Landscape was incidental, supplementary or subordinateto the peculiarities of the natives. (Tippett 18)t3QCD 0 •C’CD:I•0-CDS CD CD000 Vi86The process is not quite so innocent, however: in Douglas’ edition, the inhabitants of theSound are merged with and subordinated to the landscape in an ethnographic account followingCook’s catalogue of vegetables, animals, and even minerals (Douglas II, 280). When the narrativeturns from a relatively benign though slightly suspicious description of trade relations to the statementthe nearly-unspoken assumptions about the nature of ‘savages’ everywhere apply at Nootka Soundas much as in the South Pacific, the distancing function of these discourses comes more fully intoplay. Norman Bryson’s point about the similarities between inductive theories and methodologiesin science and a painting tradition describing ‘artistic evolution as an accumulation of controlledobservations” suggests the source of this distancing function (10).The scientist carries out experiments which yield precise observations of the naturalworld; these observations he duly records, and, as the course of observations grows,recurrences within the data begin to appear, regularities which the scientist abstractsfrom the data and formulates as propositions of a general nature, which is to say, aslaws. (Bryson 10)What Bryson calls a “classical’ account of painting” (in Pliny’s Natural History and Vasari’s Livesof the Painters) treats the “evolution” of the individual artist and of painting itself in similar fashion:“from unmediated observations the painter abstracts patterns of recurrence, and these patterns herecords in his work as forms. The stock of artistic forms develops as more and more visualphenomena are subjected to detailed examination” (Bryson 10). Although the medium may differ,the methodology and the woridview are the same for both science and art: “the progress of knowledgemoves smoothly and inevitably towards its goal, the perfect understanding and representation of thesurrounding world” (Bryson 10). In the imperial or colonial context of Cook’s voyages, thisknowledge (Smith’s “art as information”) has a purpose, always implying mastery or possession. Inthe journal of Cook’s third voyage, aesthetic vocabularies of disinterestedness and detached isolation,whether in response to the sublime or as a result of scientific objectivity, naturalise and legitimise the87resulting record by presenting it as both tableau and impersonal fact: the English discovery-- andcorresponding claim to possession-- of the northwest coast.88Chapter TwoScience and Ethnography: The Field of VisionNarrowing the FieldI left Cook looking back at Nootka Sound, enumerating the products of the country --including the inhabitants of the Sound -- in Douglas’ edition of the Voyage. Fully half of theaccount of the month at Nootka consists of Cook’s comments (or are they Douglas’?) on the “Personsof the Inhabitants.--Their Colour.--Common Dress and ornaments.--Occasional Dresses, and monstrousdecorations of wooden Masks.--Their general Dispositions.--Songs.--Musical Instruments.--Theireagerness to possess Iron and other Metals” (Douglas II, 288). Webber devoted enough time andattention to produce a head-and-shoulders portrait of one man [figures 2.6 and 2.10] and one woman[figures 2.7 and 2.9], as well as a full-length portrait of a man dressed for hunting [figure 2.81. Likethe descriptions of the products of the country preceding the descriptions of the people, these portraitscome under the rubric of scientific as well as aesthetic discourse (according to both twentieth- andeighteenth-century definitions). Here I am using science in the sense of “a particular branch ofknowledge or study; a recognized department of learning” (“Science” 648) which is to be“contradistinguished from art,” (“Science” 649), hoping to be able to reunite them as ways of seeingwhich function interdependently, and which inform each other. More particularly, I am treating it as“a branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or withobserved facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under generallaws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truths within its domain”(“Science” 649). This definition of science as a methodology or discourse, in use since 1725,identifies an eighteenth-century understanding of exploration as science: a “trustworthy method forthe discovery of new truths within its own domain.” These are more particular uses of the term than89the first meaning listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, which comes from Latin: “scientiaknowledge,” “the state or fact of knowing” (648). The Latin origin of the word “science” thusfunctions like a microcosm of one of the processes I’m investigating: the way that exploration itselfbecomes an epistemological process, not only a branch of knowledge but also a way of knowing whatis known, a metaphor for the arrangement as well as the advancement of knowledge. This metaphorprovides a cultural self-image, a means by which an imperial or colonial culture can know itself, anda means by which it can be known.Under Cook’s command, a whole new world-- a full third of the globe-- was encounteredand attempts were made . . . . “Was encountered,” “were made”: the passive verb construction, thevoice of science, creeps into my prose.1 The unconscious ease with which I fall into it is unsettling,since it reproduces the sense of ethnocentrism and inevitability (through the erasure of agency andthe use of the past tense) with which exploration discourse, particularly about Cook as imperial hero,is too often constructed. Such a construction masks its own constructedness at the level of thesentence as well as at the level of ideology. The subject of the sentence, like the creator of thediscourse, is hidden in a narrative style and voice which masks the origins of the story -- as if Godwere the author and predestination the story. Cook’s Voyages have often been told in this fashion,as if the outcome (the progress of empire) was not one of many, but the only possible story whichcould be told: attempts were made . . . . No. Cook, and other late eighteenth-century explorers ofthe so-called new world, while noting the systems of classification of indigenous peoples, envisioneda more comprehensive approach to classification than any undertaken before by Europeans, in the newworld or the old.Perhaps the very newness of the new world aided in this project (a taxonomy of theconstitutive elements -- flora, fauna, peoples -- of the new world), since it may seem easier to begin90an attempt at comprehensive classification at the beginning rather than halfway through. UnlikeEuropean plants, for example, known for centuries and by many possible names across time and space(as even a cursory glance at a work like Nicholas Culpepper’s English Physician [1653?] shows), theflora of the South Pacific were unknown and unnamed. Naming them using the Linnaean cataloguemeant that they could be recognised by anyone familiar with the system, whether or not he (sic) hadever seen the plants in question.2 In addition, the system had a built-in method of accounting fordifferences and similarities, for making connections among genus, species, and family. And thepurview of science was gradually expanding, almost requiring a new world to allow for its fulldevelopment and expansion.The science of natural history reached its ascendancy during the mid-eighteenthcentury. Contemporaries of Bartram, Jefferson, and Crèvecoeur understood naturalhistory to mean a broad area of scientific inquiry circumscribing the present-daydisciplines of meteorology, geology, botany, zoology, and ethnology. Naturalhistorians took for their subject matter all of what they called the Creation. Any objectwithin the natural order was a proper subject of natural history inquiry; only manmade objects lay outside its scope. (Regis xi)According to this definition, from Pamela Regis’ Describing Early America, much of the scope ofnatural history is inevitably to be found in the new world -- including the depiction not only of plants,but also of humans, particularly indigenous peoples. In America, native peoples and Africans weredescribedas if they were just another type of natural production. ‘Men,’ Crèvecoeur said, ‘arelike plants.’ . . . Natural historical discourse did not differentiate between vegetableand human. This had serious consequences for the people most often depicted in thesedescriptions of the new land: native Americans and blacks. These two great victimsof America’s founding became, in these descriptions, Other. (Regis xii)Culture and nature, often divided along gender lines in Western thought, are divided in natural historydiscourse along racial lines: “culture” (civilisation) is the province of Europeans who define “nature”as everyone else.3 This objectification, even if natural objectification, as a form of othering has had91serious consequences: slavery and the appropriation of territory are erased in the moment ofdefinition, for things (products) are there to be exploited. As Carolyn Merchant has argued in heraccount of the mechanisation of the scientific woridview,The metaphor of the earth as a nurturing mother was gradually to vanish as adominant image as the Scientific Revolution proceeded to mechanize and torationalize the world view. The second image, nature as disorder, called forth animportant modern idea, that of power over nature. Two new ideas, those ofmechanism and of the domination and mastery of nature, became core concepts of themodern world. (Merchant 7)This transformation of metaphors explaining the relationship between humans and the natural worldnot only “legitimated the exploitation of natural resources”-- as men exploited the labour andreproduction of women -- but also provided further legitimation for the exploitation of those humans(women, non-European peoples) associated with “wild, chaotic nature” (Merchant 189, 132).Natural History, Linnaeus, and the Language of DiscoveryThe growing influence of the science of natural history is particularly obvious in Cook’s firstvoyage, notably in the participation of Royal Society member Joseph Banks. However, at least oneperson interested in the field of natural history travelled on each of Cook’s voyages. Solander on thefirst voyage and Sparrman on the second were both students of Carl Linné, or Carolus Linnaeus ashe was known in Latin (he “deliberately revived Latin for his nomenclature precisely because it wasnobody’s national language” in order to best serve the “continental and transnational aspirations” ofhis system [Pratt, IE 25]). John Webber, the artist of the third voyage, had been recommended toCook by Solander. The influence of Linnaeus and his classificatory system on voyages of explorationand discovery was so extensive that “in the second half of the eighteenth century, whether or not anexpedition was primarily scientific, or the traveler a scientist, natural history played a part in it” (Pratt,IE 25).92Since large portions of North America contained little except natural objects(American Indians, as a primitive indigenous population, were counted in that class),the science that focused on this subject matter was a logical guide to exploration. Itprovided a set of concerns that corresponded exactly with the objects in a new,‘uncivilized’ country. In addition, it provided methods for investigation and a rhetoricfor the verbal descriptions that resulted from that method. (Regis 6)From the descriptive classification of plants to a “logical guide to exploring” their new world habitats:quite a leap, almost a leap of faith, dependent upon and revealing certain assumptions about the worldand its knowability.Nancy Stepan argues that the waning influence of religion distinguishes eighteenth. andnineteenth-century scientific thought, particularly in England. In the nineteenth century, “more andmore scientists, especially those on the continent, were willing to embrace the religiously unorthodox,but deeply appealing view, that the human races were separated from each other by such profoundmental, moral and physical differences as to constitute separate biological species of humankind”(Stepan 2). Eighteenth-century natural history was not only still monogenist, “believing that all thevarieties of humankind . . were, despite any oddities of physical appearance and social customs,members of a single human, biological ‘species’ and united in a single brotherhood by their commonhumanity” (Stepan 1), but also still compatible with a Biblical time-line. The eighteenth-centurynaming of new world territories and their productions using the methods of natural history thusrepresents a move to recreate a sense of Adam in the garden, naming the plants and animals overwhich he has been granted dominion (that important imperial label). In Linnaean botany, discoveryamounts to an act of naming: within the closed system, the plant is the name, and all significantfeatures -- or the predominant ones -- which serve to distinguish one plant from another are containedwithin the name. The implications of such a classifactory system are profound: fixing signs (names)and signifiers (plants) so irrevocably “made the conception of the Great Chain of Being completelyrational. After Linnaeus, the binomial label pointed both to a species or kind unique from all others,93and to a link on the Chain. It evoked, at once, the very specific and the whole order of the universe?(Regis 12). As published in the Species Planatarum (1753), the system consisted of a one-page chart.Once accepted, such an identification produced its own authority by virtue not of its sanction by anexpert, but of the methodology itself (Regis 12).In a way, the Linnaean system is itself a microcosm of the Great Chain of Being, articulatedby Pope in his Essay on Man (1733-4):See, thro’ this air, this ocean, and this earth,All matter quick, and bursting into birth.Above, how high progressive life may go!Around how wide! how deep extend below!Vast chain of being, which from God began,Natures aethereal, human, angel, man,Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee,From thee to Nothing! -- On superior pow’rsWere we to press, inferior might on ours:Or in the full creation leave a void,Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroy’ d:From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,Tenth, or ten thousandth, break the chain alike. (Epistle 1, 23 3-46)An eighteenth-century understanding of such a Chain, although based on an assumption andacceptance of a natural hierarchy, did not separate humanity from the rest of creation. Indeed,although Pope lamented ??What would this Man? now upward will he soar, / And little less thanAngel, would be more?? (Epistle 1, 173-4), eighteenth-century scientists, including Linnaeus, acceptedthat humans were in fact much closer to the animal than the angelic realm (Stepan 7). ArthurLovejoy’ s definition of the Chain clarifies its intellectual implications:Every discovery of a new form could be regarded, not as the disclosure of anadditional unrelated fact in nature, but as a step towards the completion of asystematic structure of which the general plan was known in advance, an additionalbit of empirical evidence of the truth of the generally accepted and cherished schemeof things. Thus the theory of the Chain of Being, purely speculative and traditionalthough it was, had upon natural history in this period an effect somewhat similar to94that which the periodic table of the elements and their atomic weights . . . had uponchemical research. (232)In other words, knowledge is not random but cumulative: the effect, and purpose, of identifyingindividual specimens, whether plant, animal, or human, from any part of the Chain, adds up to acomposite picture of the world, knowable through the relationships between its constitutive elements.Following this reasoning, “the general program of the Royal Society . . . was to discover unknownfacts of nature in order to range them properly in their places in the Chain of Being, and at the sametime to make this knowledge useful to man “ (Lovejoy 232). And the effect of this mass of detailis not chaos but clarity: “the New World of exotic mystery, of distance-shrouded indistinctness, givesway to a sharp-edged, delineated, concrete description systematically and rationally related to the OldWorld” (Regis 14).And of course the form in which these accounts were written shaped the content; the formtoo was reduced to a system, “to a literary style and a rhetoric” (Regis 15) by which the raw materialsof natural history might be presented as clearly and methodically as their names were clear and aresult of the method of observation: the list.Lists . . . were a means to argue the placement of a difficult discovery, a way togather authorities together in an up-to-date version of the information. They were alsothe written representation of the Great Chain itself. How could one argue that no suchchain existed when the chart or the table seemed a visual representation of it, showingclearly that there was such a thing to demonstrate, to portray? To an eighteenthcentury reader, it could not be a demonstration of nothing. (Regis 18)While the list, as a terse and to-the-point form of writing, might seem to embody Sprat’ s idealmimetic style in which “so many Things [are expressed], almost in an equal number of Words,” it canalso function as something like a democratic style. An awareness of grammatical rules and stylisticniceties is not required to produce a list: anyone can do it. Not surprisingly, Linnaeus’ system “had95a markedly democratic dimension, popularizing scientific inquiry as it had never been popularizedbefore’ (Pratt, IE 27):Linnaeus’ system alone launched a European knowledge-building enterprise ofunprecedented scale and appeal. His pages of Latin lists might look static and abstract,but what they did, and were conceived to do, was to set in motion a project to berealized in the world in the most concrete possible terms. As his taxonomy took holdthroughout Europe in the second half of the century, his ‘disciples’ (for so they calledthemselves) fanned out by the dozens across the globe, by sea and foot, executingwhat Daniel Boorstin has called a ‘messianic strategy.’ (Pratt, IE 25)The project was not so very democratic, however, as a key word in the foregoing quotation -- “Latin”-- indicates: this is a knowledge-building endeavour for those already possessing certain forms ofknowledge, that is to say for those who are not only literate, but also, and more particularly, educated.Alongside the frontier figures of the seafarer, the conqueror, the captive, the diplomat,there began to appear everywhere the benign, decidedly literate figure of the‘herborizer,’ armed with nothing more than a collector’s bag, a notebook, and somespecimen bottles, desiring nothing more than a few peaceful hours alone with the bugsand flowers. (Pratt, IE 27)Natural history is thus constructed as the province of the gentleman scientist.4Similarly, the system itself is simultaneously democratic and autocratic: while anyone whoknows the rules can play the game,5 the rules dictate absolutely the terms and conditions of play, noexceptions. Probably this fact accounts for the popularity of the system: with a new world, full ofunfamiliar, unknown, often seemingly unknowable data, coming increasingly into the purview of theold, the unquestionable authority of the Linnaean name reassures by establishing an apparentlytransparent bond between word and thing.An individual is being nominated to serve as the type or the representative of all othermembers of that species of thing. A name is assigned that applies to a member of thatspecies and to none other. The thing referred to, as well as the kind of thing referredto, is fixed for all time. This process of determining the relationships between a nameand a thing forces language to be more precise than it is usually thought capable ofbeing. (Regis 19)96A general desire to classify and then fix meanings is evident in much eighteenth-century intellectualand literary work, for example Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704), Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), andDiderot’s L’Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné (1751-65). Linnaean botany, the closedtaxonomy par excellence, was an important contributor to this trend. A central concept of Linnaeus’work, nulle species nova (no new species) exemplifies this closure: everything is knowable and whatis not knowable does not exist. This presentation of the world as fixed confirms Christian conceptsof perfectibility. Significantly, the system guarantees intentionality and textual authority, and thusoffers a superb vocabulary by which language can accomodate the newness of the new world.Linnaean diction provides a way to speak to anyone anywhere about what is here. TheLinnaean list shows the similarities of the American thing to any number of thingsfrom any number of places. A thing’s placement on the list relates it to any numberof natural history productions in any of the explored areas of the world. Thus forEuropean readers, America seems at once strange and familiar. (Regis 20)The advantages of such a framework to travel literature and explorers’ accounts are immediatelyobvious. As Stafford notes, “the manifest intention behind descriptions and illustrations was not totransform the visible but to be nonstereotypical, to reproduce for the uninitiated eye the earth’s novel,unknown, or undepicted realities” (40). The scientific framework offers a means to represent as wellas to perceive the new world.A Digression, concerning LanguageIn his History of the Royal Society, Sprat argued that the goal of the Society’slanguage project was “to return back to the primitive Purity and Shortness, when mendeliver’d so many Things, almost in an equal number of Words. . . . a close, naked, naturalway of speaking . . . bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can”(113). As Lovejoy’s echo of Milton (“to make this knowledge useful to man”) hints, Sprat’sphrases refer both “bak to Adamic language theory andforward to a discourse of science and97rationality” (Reed 401). The desired purity of language -- unity of content and form, or theabsence of a gap between sign and signifier-- has scientific as well as theological implications:“with this equation of things with words ISprati introduces elements of the emergingdiscourse of experimentalism . . The importance of these linguistic views lies in theintegration of the sacred with the scientific language of measuring and quantification, and inthe political importance that this combination had for Restoration England” (Reed 405).Sprat’s belief that “Nature will reveal more of its secrets to the English, than to others;because it has already furnish’d them with a Genius so well proportioned, for the receiving,and retaining, its mysteries” (114-5) reveals the forward-looking use-value of this purifiedlanguage for the expansion of national knowledge and commerce. However, the backward-looking post-lapsarian argument also means that, “because of Adam and Eve’s fallen state,time itself will inevitably corrupt language” (Reed 401-2), which therefore simultaneouslyadvances knowledge and regresses. The notion of failure is virtually built into the ideal;accordingly, despite “the importance he places on the delivery of ‘so many things LjcJ, almostin an equal number of words Isici’ . . . ISprat himsefJ personally found Ithisi impossible toaccomplish” (Reed 403-4).The history of scientific discourse -- including Stafford’s analysis-- is also a historyof a particular history of language: as passive, a copy of some reality which existsindependently of language and which is never quite adequately grasped by it. “Language, forSprat and for others reacting against a prevalent ornate style, is always trying to catch up tothe physical world of things, trying to achieve the supposed ideal of matching that world”(Lefevre 99). The paradox of the scientific revolution’s dream of a transparent language liesin the fact that writers like Sprat must resort to metaphor to convey the idea of a purelymimetic language, often imaged as a clear windowpane or glass unobstructed by the garments,veils, or curtains of rhetoric (Lefevre 99). Such a desire for an “unambiguous, universal98concordance between words and things” (Leftvre 98) is also, however, part of a masculineenterprise, or of a knowledge-building enterprise defined as a masculine endeavour by alanguage which itself is becoming increasingly masculine. What Sprat calls the “digressions,amplifications, and swellings of style” (113) are relegated to the realm of the female,increasingly represented in literature by the novel of sentiment and sensibility -- in contrastto such male literary forms as the epic or mock-epic (think of the order, precision, exactnessof Pope’s couplets or the highly controlled structure of Fielding’s novels) or the leisurely,dispassionate, and above all gentlemanly periodical essays of Steele and Addison or SamuelJohnson.There is another paradox inherent in this theoretically mimetic scientific style: inaddition to its dependence on metaphor, it also breaks the mimetic structure at the verymoment of its construction. As Merchant notes,in Latin and the romance languages of medieval and early modernEurope, nature was a feminine noun, and hence, like the virtues(temperance, wisdom, etc.) personified as female. (Latin: natura,-;German: die Natur; French: la nature; Italian: la natura; Spanish: la natura.)The Greek word physis was also feminine. (Merchant xix)Thus the relationship between the natural world and the words used to describe it is themetaphoric one of women and men, or more specifically that of wives and husbands:submission and domination. And a similar metaphor (from the sixteenth century onwards)explains Europe’s relationship to the new world by imaging the European explorer (and latersettler) as the appropriate husband for the new world territory personified as a woman. Theirony is that the supposedly dispassionate discourse of science sexualises not only humaninteraction with the world, thus personifying the world of things, but also non-humanrelationships between elements of the world of things.Perhaps the use of such figurative language is unavoidable, yet scientJic discourse-- by claiming objectivity -- presents itself as mimetic, a transparent glass without a curtain99of rhetoric, and thus as natural. As Bazerman notes, “scientific language is a particularlyhard case for rhetoric, for sciences have the reputation for eschewing rhetoric and simplyreporting natural fact that transcends symbolic trappings. Scientific writing is often treatedapart from other forms of writing, as a special case privileged through its reliance onmathematics (considered a purer symbolic system than natural language” (6). It is as ifscientific writing was not writing at all; that is, as if the content of scientific writing wasmediated by neither form nor the human agent. In marked contrast to other kinds of writtenlanguage, which highlight the agency and choices of the writer,to write science is commonly thought not to write at all, just simply torecord the natural facts. Even widely published scientists, responsible forthe production of many texts over many years, often do not seethemselves as accomplished writers, nor do they recognize any self-conscious control of their texts. The popular belief of this past centurythat scientific language is simply a transparent transmitter of natural factsis, of course, wrong . . . . It is nonetheless fascinating that such amisconception could have thrived so well in the face of the massivelinguistic work that has gone into scientific communication. This atteststo the success of scientific language as an accomplished system. So muchhas already been done, and hides so far behind the scenes of currentpractices, that using the language seems hardly an effort at all.(Bazerman 14-5)Such a development was not essential to science. The French chemist, Antoine Lavoisier, useda rather ornate, rhetorical description of “what was eventually to be called oxygen LasJair, the best and most respirable part of the air . . . . more air than ordinary air” in hisElements of Chemistry (1789) to talk his (and science’s) way closer to a more precisedefinition (Leftvre 103). However, thefact that he was ridiculedfor his non-transparent style,and that Sprat’s ideal mimetic style remains largely unquestioned as a discursive value,demonstrates Merchant and Lefevre’s points about the interdependent and mutuallytransformative role of language and ideas in cultural transformations. As Merchant puts it,an array of ideas exists, available to a given age; some of these forunarticulated reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups;others do not. Some ideas spread; others temporarily die out. But thedirection and culmination of social changes begin to differentiate among100the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more centralrole in the array, while others move to the periphery. Out of thisdifferential appeal of ideas that seem most plausible under particularsocial conditions, cultural transformations develop. (Merchant xviii)The language of the scientific revolution has created particular global realities which illustrateLefevre’s thesis about invention as a social, and not only an individual, act.Two further points about the Linnaean system are worth making here. One is that the fixityof natural objects -- their similarity and knowability on a global scale -- is heightened by thepresentation in a list. The Linnaean list uses a shorthand derived from medieval Latin, in which verbsare conspicuously absent, resulting in a deliberate stasis: “the unexpressed, unwritten verb implied inall of the descriptions is ‘to be.’ In the lists, things merely are. All possible predicates are gone:reproduction, nutrition, sensitivity, or movement, all unstated (and thus unimportant) before theregularizing litany of names and the descriptions” (Regis 21). In short, “confusing plenitude isresolved to the beauty and order of a list” (Regis 22). The other point is that although the predicateof reproduction is eliminated along with any others, the Species Planatarum sexualises plants byidentifying them according to their reproductive parts in the one-page chart [figure 2.1]. Moreimportantly, the accompanying written description uses the vocabulary of human relationships toexplain the classifications. For example, the first class (A on the Chart, 1 in the “Characters ofClasses”), Monandria, is described as follows:ONE MALE.One husband in marriage.One stamen in an hermaphrodite flower. (Steam, “Linnaeus’s Sexual System” 29)Further down the chart, Class X (number 22), Dioecia, is described thus:ONE HOUSE.Husbands live with their wives in the same house, but have different beds.Male flowers and female flowers are on the same plant. (Steam, “LSS” 32)101SEXUAL SYSTEM OF CLASSIFICATIONC1arsf LNNNETHODUS p1atawm SEXUALISin SLTEMATE NATUU€defcriptairv‘4GD. ERET. Iathei1et6:LUgcL bat: 1736’ fedt edd4tFIGURE 2.1 The classes of Linnaeus’ sexual system of classification, as illustrated in Ehret’soriginal plate, 1736 (much reduced). Reproduced from W.T. Steam, Species Planatarum: AFacsimile of the First Edition, 2 vols. (London: Ray Society, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 289.102Once again, the language of scientific discourse bears scrutiny: in my sentences which introduce thelast two quotations, the passive voice is required not only to erase any sense of agency, but also toerase the subject who might be an agent. The result is a discourse which replaces the persuasive,argumentative, rhetorical style of centuries past with a clear, unambiguous, expository style —appropriate to description which aims for transparency and objectivity. In erasing the subject andagent of the sentence and of an experiment, however, such a conception of language transforms notonly the individual writer, but the social world of that writer as well: the “I” who might be subjectand agent is reduced to and conflated with the “eye” observing and recording an event asdispassionately as possible. The scientist no longer participates in the world; instead, he observes andrecords it. The application of such a system of classification to humans, particularly non-Europeans,heightens the process of objectification: it is not that plants move up the Chain closer to humans, butthat (some) humans are moved down the Chain closer to plants.The metaphor of marital relationships in the plant world characterising Linnaeus’ sexualsystem of classification may have influenced scientific explorers’ understanding of indigenouspopulations in the new world, as a comparison between figures 2.1 [1736] and 2.2 (Tableau desDécouvertes du Capne Cook, & de la Perouse [1797]) suggests. While it may be impossible to provethat one chart influenced the other, the similarities between the two are striking: both present twentyfour different specimens with the visual schemata necessary to distinguish one kind from another bymeans of their identifiable characteristics. The Nootka, for example (number 1 on the chart accordingto the legend), are shown against the racks of drying fish noted in Cook’s journal of the third voyage;the Nootka man’s head is evidently a visual quotation from Webber’ s drawings (see figures 2.6 and2.10), as are the hat with the bulbous top and the woven cape worn by the woman (see figures 2.7and 2.9). The Maori man next to the Nootka couple has a distinctly tattooed face (also lifted from103••-—.N‘N: ‘‘i: ‘i ,•‘‘c ••‘-“.,.“‘6, ‘“-“. :‘:‘-c “ “IFIGURE 2.2 Tableau des découvertes du Capne Cook et de Ia Perouse, hand-coloured etchingby St.-Sauveur. Reproduced from Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, colour plate 17,pp. 157-7.(I’I6— 661) ;;•/ -f/21/)I.I.,_1\—,tlC,S-C—104Webber’s drawing); the warlike nature of the Maori is indicated by his spear. Significantly, this tablehas no obvious arrangement by chronology, by location, by explorer, or by hierarchy: it simplypresents a flow of information about human groups and their social and physical environments,suggested by the habitations and background flora. However, some specifics were apparently notimportant enough to render; although different nations hold different poses, evidently these are notmeant in themselves to convey ethnographic information, just as the palm trees forming part of thecompositional grouping of the “Hab.ts d’Ulietca” (no. 18) drift inappropriately behind the “Hab.tsd’Oonalaska.” The border of Pacific exotica -- outrigger canoes, sea monsters, “America” personifiedas a woman, pineapples, gold, maps, and monkeys -- hints at the containing capacity of such acatalogue of classification. Such a table visually asserts that European systems of knowledge areadequate to the understanding and representation of the exotic new world; a seemingly bewilderingmiscellany of human data is given coherence and relevance, within the context of a Pacific world andEurope’s encounter with it.In his Systema Naturae (1735), Linnaeus had included humans in his list of animals, listingdifferent human groups as different links in the Great Chain of Being. This notion incorporated fourracial distinctions: American, European, Asiatic, and African. The first two categories are describedin terms which move from description to evaluation in the last phrase:American: Copper-coloured, choleric, erect. Hair black, straight, thick; nostrils wide,face harsh; beard scanty; obstinate, content free. Paints himself with fine red lines.Regulated by customs.European: Fair, sanguine, brawny. Hair yellow, brown, flowing; eyes blue; gentle,acute, inventive. Covered with vestments. Governed by laws. (Qtd. in Popkin 248)Asians and Africans are discussed in even more judgmental terms than Americans. The effects ofsuch a system were far-reaching:105Whites and blacks were of the same species, but of different races. The newness ofthis classification of man with the animals, the linking of Homo sapiens with fancifulcreatures for whom there was scant evidence (the supposedly cave-dwelling homotroglodyte) and the division of man into separate races began the speculation thatwould culminate, as early as 1766, in Hume’s claim that non-white races were of adifferent species than the white race. (Regis 22)In theory, it is not so surprising that the Linnaean method of classification on the basis ofsimilarities and differences should emphasise racial distinctions, or that “observations would proceedalong racial lines.” In practice, however, and perhaps because the new world was the field for thefieldwork of natural history and the context of domination, “men of other races [i.e., non-Europeans],perhaps of other species, became the natural6 objects of this scrutiny” (Regis 22). That is to say, thesame methods that gentleman “herborizers” applied to the classification of strange and unfamiliarplants were applied to the non-European peoples they encountered in scientific and imperialexpeditions, producing “manners-and-customs’ descriptions, after the topics on which they usuallyfocus” (Regis 23). The effect is inextricably linked to the stasis of the Linnaean description. InAmerica, Regis argues, “Native Americans are subsumed under this natural historical description,becoming entries on a list, links on the Chain. The rhetoric of this description denies them anyhistory, individual or cultural, because that rhetoric did not include a way to represent time” (25).The implications for indigenous peoples are serious, particularly because the representations producedby such a method carry the sanction of the scientific method, meant to guarantee that the “descriptionsthemselves are objective fact” (Regis 37).A Digression, concerning (Anthropological) TimeBecause natural history discourse about non-European peoples “did not include a wayto represent time” (generally imaged as movement or passage in Western thought, asillustrated by the discourse of history), that discourse presents time as stasis in new worlds.106It represents non-European peoples as paralysed or frozen at some early stage of humandevelopment according to the linear standards of the old world, marked by such tropes as‘progress.’ So in addition to the oppositions between ‘new’ and ‘old,’ ‘non-white’ and ‘white,’the distinction between ‘then’ and ‘now’ bears scrutiny. In Time and the Other: HowAnthropolog-i, Makes its Object, Johannes Fabian examines “past and present uses of Time asways of construing the object of Ithel discipline” (x). He argues that it is by its use of Timethat anthropology (since its emergence as a discourse in eighteenth-century travel accountsthrough to the present) most clearly constitutes “its own object -- the savage, the primitive,the Other” (1).The role of natural history, and later of evolutionary science, is as crucial to theunderstanding of time as it is to the understanding of place in eighteenth-century travelliterature. Evolutionary theory placed the natural world (as Western history, philosophy, andreligion had placed the social world) on a time line, via the “Geological Time” of Lyell andDarwin. As part of this process, the non-European peoples who had already been associatedwith (locked into, perhaps) the realm of nature rather than that of culture were seen byEuropeans, in a naturalised, universalised conception of Time, as “reflections of us as we oncewere,” to borrow W. Arens’ phrase (19). On such an evolutionary time-line, “given societiesof all times and places Icouldi be plotted in terms of relative distance from the present”moment of the defining subject, that is to say from the current Western metropolis (Fabian26).Anthropoiogy [thus] contributed above all to the intellectual justfficationof the colonial enterprise. It gave to politics and economics-- bothconcerned with human Time — a firm belief in ‘natural,’ i.e., evolutionaryTime. It promoted a scheme in terms of which not only past cultures, butall living societies were irrevocably placed on a temporal slope, a streamof Time — some upstream, some downstream. Civilization, evolution,development, acculturation, modernization, (and their cousins,industrialization and urbanization) are all terms whose conceptualcontent derives, in ways that can be specified, from evolutionary Time.(Fabian 17)107Although evolutionary ideas of Time have been largely discarded by anthropology,Fabian argues, their legacy survives in the continued (popular) use of such concepts as‘civilisation’ and ‘primitive.’ In similar fashion, the legacy of natural history is obvious inthe practice of “distancing and separation” necessary to produce classifications andtaxonomies. In short, “what makes the savage signficant in the evolutionist’s Time is thathe lives in another Time” (27). What is most peculiar about this notion (which informsnearly all understanding of the so-called primitive) is that although the anthropologist andthe anthropological object, the Other, meet in a shared time and space, in anthropologicaldiscourse the Other occupies the past. Fabian calls this supreme distancing in time the“denial of coevalness . . . . a persistent and systematic tendency to place the referent(s) ofanthropology in a Time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse,”that is, in the past (Fabian 31). Thus it is that travelling among anthropological Others —non-European peoples -- amounts not only to travelling in space, but also to travelling in,back through, time. A late eighteenth-century French traveller, I. M. Degerando, expressedthis idea clearly in his Observation of Savtwe Peoples, published in 1800: “The philosophicaltraveller, sailing to the ends of the earth, is in fact travelling in time: he is exploring the past:every step he makes is the passage of an age” (qtd. in Fabian 7). Such an understanding ofthe moment ofencounter in time has profound implicationsfor an understanding of movementthrough space as well.Systema Naturae to Cook at Nootka SoundA Linnaean specimen entry begins with the generic name, then offers the ‘specificdifferential character,’ the elements of the plant that distinguish it from others in thegenus. A third part is the trivial name, which, with the generic name, makes up thetwo Latin names that are entered in the lists. A fourth part is the plant’s habitat, andlast is a brief description or annotation, or synonyms, often with references to earliersystems or illustrations of the plant in question. (Regis 20)108Linnaeus’ first published work, the Systema Naturae (1735) carried a broadside “beginning CaroliLinnaei, Sveci, Methodus” [figure 2.3] as an insert in many copies of the first edition which wasreprinted in later editions (Steam, “Four” 75). This Methodus, Steam argues, represents “the idealbehind the Species Planatarum and cognate works” as taxonomies: by noting names, theory, genus,species, attributes, uses and literature -- in short all relevant data -- this method should allow for anauthoritative, fixed and above all scholarly/scientific identification of the natural object under scrutiny(Steam, “Four” 75). The twentieth-century translator of this document, Karl P. Schmidt, noted “that‘to a surprising degree, Linnaeus’s instructions for the descriptions and classification of the threekingdoms of nature represent good modern practice for the adequate description of newlydiscriminated species of plants, animals, or minerals” (qtd. in Steam, “Four” 75). In consequence,both the form and the content of travel writing were transformed, as Pratt argues in Imperial Eyes:Descriptions of flora and fauna were not in themselves new to travel writing. On thecontrary, they had been conventional components of travel books since at least thesixteenth century. However, they were typically structured as appendices or formaldigressions from the narrative. With the founding of the global classificatory project,on the other hand, the observing and cataloguing of nature itself became narratable.It could constitute a series of events, or even produce a plot. It could form the mainstoryline of an entire account. (27-8)Natural history moves from a supporting (as appendices, formal digressions) to a central rolein travel and exploration narratives, signifying a shift in the focus of discovery as a knowledge-building endeavour from new territories to their constitutive elements. However, much of the materialpresented remains the same, as the Methodus reveals. The difference between sixteenth andseventeenth-century travel literature produced to encourage colonisation of the new world and Section6 of the Methodus, which establishes the use-value of the object under scrutiny, is one of degreerather than quality. It is as if the central image for this project of exploration and discovery haschanged from a map with blank spaces (denoting unknown, uncharted territory) to a microscope. As109THE METHOD OF CHARLES LINNAEUS, THESWEDE,by which the Physiologist [we should write zoologist.botanist, or geologist] can accurately and successfullypur together the history of [i.e. the data concerning]each and every natural object, which method iscontained in the following paragraphs.I. NAMES1. Give the selected name, both generic and specific,of the author, if already described, or give a nameoneself [if a new description is required].2. List the synonyms of all the important systematists.3. List as far as possible the synonyms of all the olderor more recent [non-technical] authors.4. Give the vernacular name, also translated intoLatin.5. List the names given by various peoples, especiallythe Greek names.6. State the etymology of all generic names (1-5).II. THEORY7. Discuss the classification as to classes and ordersaccording to different systems.8. State the genera to which the object in question hasbeen assigned by various systematists (7).III. GENUS9. Give an account of the natural characters, with alist of all possible characteristic features.10. Give the essential characters, pointing out themost distinguishing features.11. Set forth also artificial characters in order todistinguish the genera treated as units in the system(7).12. Explain the erroneous ideas [‘hallucinations’] ofthe authors discussed under (8) in the light of (9).13. Establish the natural genus (9).14. The name of the genus (13), as selected (I),* is tobe confirmed, and it is to be stated why other namesare rejected.IV. SPECIES15. A detailed description of the object is to be given,based on all its external parts.16. All the known species of the proposed genus (13)are to be listed.17. All the differences between the proposed species(I) and the ones listed (16) are to be set forth (15).18. The important differences shall then be retained,and the others rejected.19. The specific c4fferentia [is to be settled] with [anexposition of] the reason for what has been done untilthe naturalist has fully accounted for every word in it.[In the light of later editions, ‘The naturalist will thencompose the dfferentia specifica of his object and givethe reasons for what he has done.’]20. All the variations of the proposed species, asdescribed by the authors quoted, are to be set forth.21. These variations are to be subordinated to thespecies to which they naturally belong, with the reasonfor the action proposed under paragraph (15).V. ATTRIBUTES22. Include what is known about the season of birth,growth, and maturity, with mode of breeding and ofbirth or hatching, old age, and death.23. State the locality, giving the geographic region andpolitical province.24. Give the latitude and longitude.25. Describe the climate and soil.26. Give an account of the diet, habitsm andtemperament.27. Describe the anatomy of the body, particularly anyremarkable features, together with a microscopicexamination.VI. USES28. List the economic uses, actual and possible, amongvarious peoples.29. State dietary uses, with the effects on the humanbody.30. State the physical uses, with the mode of operationand constituent elements.31. State the chemical uses according to the constituentsubstances from analysis.32. State the medical uses, in which diseases, and withwhat results, according to reason and experience.33. Give the pharmaceutical infor,nation, as to whatparts are used, method of preparation, andcomposition.34. Give directions for medical use, with emphasis onthe best method, dosage, and necessary precautions.VII. LITERATURE35. The collector, with time and place, is to be noted.36. Amusing and pleasing historical traditions are tobe reported.37. Empty superstitions are to be rejected.38. Selected poetic references are to be cited.FIGURE 2.3 The Method of Charles Linnaeus, theSwede . . . . Reproduced from Steam, SpeciesPlanatarum, vol. 2., pp. 75-80.110a result, science -- particularly but not exclusively natural history -- becomes its own justification, andknowledge, as much as the book containing it, becomes a project. This is obvious in the case ofcircumnavigation, “a double deed that consists of sailing round the world and then writing an account(the term ‘circumnavigation’ refers either to the voyage or the book)” (Pratt IE 29), as well as in thecase of ‘voyage,’ both the activity of Cook’s exploration and the title of the account of thatexploration.A Digression, concerning (Mapping) SpaceContrary to previous centuries of exploration of such romantic proportions as thediscovery of strange and unfamiliar lands, where any marvel or monstrosity from Amazonsto dogs with human heads might be found, or the search for a trade route to the East, withsuch glamourous luxuries as spices, tea, and silk, exploration in the eighteenth century wassomewhat more prosaic. Characterised (for England) primarily by the figure of Cook, theromance and glamour of exploring -- or better yet, of discovering -- Terra Incognita wasreplaced by scientfic exactitude and measurement: by the time of Cook’s death, the outlinesof all the continents were more or less established. In addition to the somewhat reduced gloryofcircumnavigating (as opposed to discovering) new continents such as Australia, Cook madeknown to Europeans many islands in the Pacific Ocean which now appear as very small dotson maps. This is not to say that Cook, with the attention to detail that made England’svictory in the Seven Years’ War attributable in part to his careful charting of the St.Lawrence, was such a stickler for detail that he could not see the larger picture. On thecontrary, on each of his voyages he sought the large and overwhelming discovery, only tonegate it: the second and third voyages produced negative results, disproving the existence ofa Southern Continent as well as that of a Northwest Passage.111It is easy to be seduced by the apparent geographical truth of the maps produced byCook’s voyages; the critical mind may be appeased by the negative findings and Cook’smethodology, more scientific than that of his predecessors, or that of the so-called ‘closetgeographers’ in England, who could assert with all the confidence of ignorance the certainexistence of a Northwest Passage or a Southern Continent.8 Cook’s maps and charts may notbe as accurate as those of the young George Vancouver (who commanded an expedition to thenorthwest coast of North America fifteen years after he had been there with Cook and chartedit with such accuracy that his maps remained the standard for the next hundred years or so).However, the maps his voyages produced were more precise than the material available toCook himself “The history of cartography is largely that of the increase in the accuracy withwhich these elements of distance and direction are determined and in the comprehensivenessof the map content” (Crone xi). However, the history of cartography can also be described asone of the changing attitudes and perceptions which affect the perception or representation ofgeographical elements. In the world maps of classical Greece, for example,a general principle which governed much Greek thinking then enteredinto the delineation of the map -- namely, the symmetry of nature.Features north of the axis must be balanced by similar features to theSouth . . . . This principle was applied further afield; the Nile beingthought to flow from its upper course from west to east, the unknownupper course of the Ister was made to do likewise. Emphasis on thispoint is necessary, for it strongly influenced later ideas on the earth’sconfiguration. Ptolemy probably conceived his enclosed Indian Ocean asa counterpart of the Mediterranean. The frame of the world mapcontinued to be circular, and, for the Greeks, centered at Delphi —assumptions which the philosophers often derided. (Crone 17)Far from being a documentary of known facts about the world they represent graphically,maps are marked by their producers’ points of view and assumptions governing intellectualas well as physical space. In his Histort, of Carto.c.raphy, Leo Bagrow asserts that “the varietyof map forms is governed by the medium in which they are prepared” apparently a simpledescription or statement offact (26). While this is to be taken for granted about European112maps, the same neutral assessment evidently does not apply to the maps of non-Europeans:on the same page, Bagrow asserts that “primitive peoples.. . . know nothing of abstract maps,conventional generalisation, or data of a general level. They cannot comprehend a large areasolely by applying general considerations. They cannot portray the world, or even visualiseit in their minds” (26).In any analysis of early maps, the role of the compilers, engravers and printers, andcosmographers (who “often interpreted or applied the results obtained by explorers to fit intopreconceived opinions” [Crone xiii]) must be taken into account. However, later maps havetheir ideological biases as well, both depending upon and shaping their makers’ and audiences’perceptions of the world. The Mercator Projection provides a case in point [figure 2.41.Named for the sixteenth-century geographer who solved a crucial problem of practicalnavigation, “the representation of constant bearings (loxodromes) as straight lines on a chart,”this projection of the worldflattens the globe by cutting it into non-continuous land and oceanmasses (Crone 211). It does so in order to allow lines of longitude, which converge at thepoles, to be represented as straight lines as unproblematically as are parallel circles of latitude.The resulting distortion is both geographical and ideological: the northern orientation of aMercator map gives precedence to land masses north of the equator, making them appearproportionately larger than those south of the equator. While any map projection -- whichessentially renders a three-dimensional object, the earth, in two-dimensional form -- willinevitably be distorted, the assumptions underlining the popular Mercator Projection indicatethe greater importance accorded the area north of the Equator, the so-called First World,relative to those south of it, generally the so-called Third or Developing World (thus the term“projection” alsofunctions as a pun). These are twentieth-century issues, perhaps, and oughtnot to be imported backwards into the eighteenth, Cook’s time. However, present-day113FIGURE 2.4 Mercator Projection, showing loxodromes as straight lines and theresulting distortion of areas away from the Equator. In particular, areas north of theEquator appear considerably larger, while those south of it are proportionatelysmaller: for example, although Greenland and Mexico are approximately the samesize, Greenland appears several times larger here. Reproduced from Porter W.McDonnell, Jr., Introduction to Map Projections, (New York and Basel: MarcelDekker, 1979), fig. 6-2, p. 70.114attitudes have their roots in the past; much of the world south of the Equator was firstencountered by those north of it because of Cook.In Douglas’ edition of Cook’s journal, the discourse of natural history can be seen in theoccasional use of binomial labels and other Latin plant and animal names, as well as in specificreference to Linnaeus. Although Douglas does not follow the Linnaean Methodus in all its scientificexactitude, he does provide descriptions which compare the object under scrutiny with its knowncounterpart, usually European but sometimes from the South Pacific, noting differences moreparticularly than similarities; and he tries to locate it in the lists relative to other known types, oftenproviding footnotes to support his claims. For example, Douglas notes of the deer-skins traded bythe Nootka that they “were scarcer [than bear-skins], and they seem to belong to that sort called thefallow-deer by the historians of Carolina; though Mr. Pennant thinks it quite a different species fromours, and distinguishes it by the name of Virginian deer,” providing the footnote to Pennant’s text forthe benefit of readers interested in pursuing the question -- or, better yet, for those learned readersalready familiar with Pennant’s work (Douglas II, 293).As always in Douglas’ edition, textual authority is questionable: it is necessary to comparespecific passages with their counterparts in Beaglehole’ s edition before making any claims regardingCook’s use of Linnaean methodology.The trees which chiefly compose the woods, are the Canadian pine, white cypress,cypressus thyoides, the wild pine, with two or three other sorts of pine less common.The two first make up almost two-thirds of the whole; and, at a distance, might bemistaken for the same tree; as they both run up into pointed spire-like tops: but theyare easily distinguished on coming nearer, from their colour; the cypress being of amuch paler green, or shade, than the other. The trees, in general, grow with greatvigour, and are all of a large size. (Douglas II, 291)115In this passage, the Linnaean name halts the descriptive flow of the observing eye moving across theforest; it halts and fixes the narrative (as indeed it is meant to fix meaning).9 The passage inBeaglehole’ s edition is considerably shorter:The land bordering upon the Sea coast is of a middling hieght [sic] and level, butabout the Sound it consi[s]ts of high hills and deep Values, for the most part cloathedwith large timbers, such as Spruce fir and white Cedar.* (Beaglehole 111:1, 309)’°At that last word, “Cedar,’ however, Beaglehole provides a footnote bristling with Linnaeannomenclature:‘our Botanist found here the Sipherous wood in great plenty.’ --Edgar, f. 152v. --Cook’s ‘Spruce fir’, the European ‘Norway Spruce’, Picea excelsa, is perhaps herethe White Spruce, Picea glauca. ‘White Cedar’ must be the ‘white cypress, cypressusthyoides’ (Cupressus thyoides Linn.) of Voyage, II, p. 291, and is the Yellow Cypressor Cedar, Chamaecyparis nootkatensis. It was earlier known as Cupressusnootkatensis. (Beaglehole 111:1, 309)It seems that Beaglehole’ s footnote makes greater use of Linnaean labels than do Cook’s journals,and that Douglas is again engaged in supplementing -- without attribution -- Cook’s account withmaterial from other sources, either the logs of the other officers or other works entirely.In its account of birds of the Sound, Douglas’ edition specifically mentions Linnaeus.There are also some [birds], which, I believe, are not mentioned, or at least vary, veryconsiderable, from the accounts given of them by any writers who have treatedprofessedly on this part of natural history. The two first of these are species of woodpeckers. One less than a thrush, of a black colour above, with white spots on thewings, a crimson head, neck and breast, with a yellowish olive-colourd [sic] belly;from which last circumstance it might, perhaps, not improperly be called the yellow-bellied wood-pecker. The other is a larger, and much more elegant bird, of a duskybrown colour, on the upper part, richly waved with black, except about the head; thebelly of a reddish cast, with round black spots; a black spot on the breast; and theunder-side of the wings and tail of a plain scarlet colour though blackish above; witha crimson streak running from the angle of the mouth, a little down the neck on eachside. The third and fourth, are a small bird of the finch kind, about the size of alinnet, of a dark dusky colour, whitish below, with a black head and neck, and whitebill; and a sand-piper, of the size of a small pigeon, of a dusky brown colour, andwhite below, except the throat and breast, with a broad white band across the wings.There are also humming-birds; which yet seem to difer [sic] from the numerous sortsof this delicate animal already known, unless they be a mere variety of the trochilus116colubris of Linnaeus. These, perhaps, inhabit more to the Southward, and spreadNorthward as the season advances; because we saw none at first, though, near thetime of our departure, the natives brought them to the ships in great numbers.(Douglas II, 297)Although it fulfills the Methodus’ requirement for detailed description, this lengthy passage fromDouglas is conspicuous in its failure to give Linnaean (that is to say, scientific) names and labels tothese species, presumably variations on those already named. However, perhaps this failure is notso surprising when the passage is compared to the same moment in Beaglehole’s edition.Of land Birds we saw but few, nor are Water Fowl in any great plenty and all sortsexcept ravens and crows* were extremely shy and fearfull, probably from being oftenhunted by the inhabitants. Amongst the land birds is a very beautiful huming [sic]bird, amongst the Water Fowl are Swans*, . . . (Beaglehole 111:1, 309-10)Again, the footnote at “Swans” provides the Latin binomials for the birds in question. As usual,Douglas’ description is several times longer than Cook’s, but more curious than the difference inlength is the fact that Beaglehole, more than either Douglas or Cook, feels compelled to provide theLinnaean names to identify the species found at Nootka Sound. Often, he does so in footnotes whichfollow the Linnaean Methodus more clearly than the passage they annotate -- so that the form inwhich this material is presented, the scholarly appendage, as well as the content (names, theory,genus, species, attributes), solidifies the impression of a scientific text of a scientific expedition. Theeffect is a reification of the “science” of Cook’s voyage and of Beaglehole’ s edition, and thereforeof an agreeable expansion (dulce et utile) of European knowledge.“Inhabitants their Persons and Habits”Just when it seems that natural historical discourses are not quite as crucial -- or indeed asscientific -- in the journal of Cook’s scientific voyages as might be expected, whether in Beaglehole’ sedition or in Douglas,’ the narrative turns to a variation on this theme: ethnography. The native117inhabitants of Nootka Sound are subsumed under the general narrative heading “products of thecountry,” coming immediately after minerals, with only a paragraph break to signal the switch inDouglas’ account. That more is not made of this transition is puzzling, since fully half of the accountof the month at Nootka Sound is devoted to an ethnographic description of the Nootka, beginningwith their “persons,” in Douglas’ edition. Unlike Douglas’ edition, which uses paragraph breaks tosignal changes in topic, Beaglehole’ s text develops the narrative by using the classificatory norms ofscience; Beaglehole highlights changes in ethnographic subject matter with headings such as“Animals,” “Inhabitants their Persons and Habits,” “Manufacture,” and “Ornaments, Songs” in themargins of the text (Beaglehole 111:1, 309, 311, 312, 314, 315).In the ethnographic accounts of the inhabitants of Nootka Sound, the scientific discourses ofnatural history come most fully into play and the Linnaean Methodus is most fully achieved. TheNootka (of whom Cook said “Were I to affix a name to the people of Nootka, as a distinct nation,I would call them Wakashians; from the word Wakash, which was very frequently in their mouths”[Douglas II, 337]), as much as their material culture or their physical environment, are treated as“natural objects,” as “just another type of natural production.” (Regis states that such treatment ischaracteristic of natural historical discourses in the new world). In Douglas’ edition, far morefootnotes and scholarly or scientific additions append descriptions of the people than descriptions ofthe area’s animals, vegetables, and minerals. A discussion of their hair, or more properly theNootka’ s lack of facial and body hair, provides the editor with an opportunity to footnote what seemsan extraordinarily long (most of one page) discussion of, to paraphrase Swift, “a General History ofBeards among Americans.”12 A description of facial hair among the Nootka introduces this learneddigression:They have either no beards at all, which was most commonly the case, or a small thinone upon the point of the chin; which does not arise from any natural defect of hair118on that part, but from plucking it out more or less; for some of them, particularly theold men, have not only considerable beards all over the chin, but whiskers, ormustachios; both on the upper lip, and running from thence toward the lower jawobliquely downward.* Their eye-brows are also scanty, and always narrow; but thehair of the head is in great abundance . . . . (Douglas II, 301-2)Plainly, further inquiry is necessary to explain this state of affairs -- why should these people havean abundance of hair upon their heads, but very little upon their faces? (This discrepancy wentunnoticed by Cook, according to Beaglehole’s edition, as well as by the other officers whosecomments on hair are footnoted at this juncture [Beaglehole 111:1, 3111.) Douglas’s footnote providesan explanation, with reference to no less than four other sources, M. de Paw’s Recherches sur lesAmericains, William Robertson’s History of America (published in 1777 by Strahan and Cadell, theLondon publishers of Douglas’ edition), Jonathan Carver’s Travels through the Interior Parts ofNorthAmerica (1778), and Marsden’s History of Sumatra (Douglas II, 302).’ These works not only treatdifferent areas of North America, but also refer to Mexico and Sumatra, other parts of the worldentirely. By invoking them, Douglas highlights the breadth of knowledge which informs the text ofCook’s Voyage, as if establishing the Genus and Species of the Nootka by noting their similaritiesto, and differences from, not only Europeans -- and that comparison is always at least implicit -- butother new world peoples, according to the Linnaean Methodus. Such a comparison between culturalgroups as specimens of natural history, however, has an essentialising and ultimately dehumanisingeffect. As Stepan has argued, the result of such typologies “was to give ‘a mental abstraction anindependent reality’, to make it real or ‘reify’ the idea of racial type when in fact the type was asocial construct which scientists then treated as though it were in fact ‘in nature” (Stepan xviii).The footnote on beards itself depicts some of the bizarre positions that ethnographic discoursecreates in its attempt to determine, or posit, meaning in particular practices. It begins with theassertion that119one of the most curious singularities in the natural history of the human species, is thesupposed defect in the habit and temperature of the bodies of the American Indians,exemplified in their having no beards, while they are furnished with a profusion ofhair on their heads. (Douglas II, 302)Then the footnote ends with a quotation from Marsden ‘s History of Sumatra in which the author‘‘must confess, that it would remove some small degree of doubt from my mind, could it beascertained that no such custom [the plucking or tweezing of hair] prevails” (Douglas II, 302). Whatbetter proof of scientific credibility could be offered than such a lengthy, considered, and annotateddiscussion of a matter as apparently trivial as the presence or absence of beards? Less attention ispaid to colour in Douglas’ edition:Their colour we could never positively determine, as their bodies were incrusted withpaint and dirt; though, in particular cases, when these were rubbed off, the whitenessof the skin appeared almost to equal that of Europeans; though rather of that pale,effete cast which distinguishes those of our Southern nations. (Douglas II, 303)Here the connection to Swift’s Tale of a Tub becomes clear: the satiric context of the list of the GrubStreet hack’s other self-important literary endeavours leaves no doubt that A General History ofEars,like A Modest Defense of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages, is ridiculous. In the context oftravel writing or explorers’ accounts of the new world, however, no detail regarding the peculiar orexotic nature of the inhabitants is too minute to escape notice and (pseudo) scientific consideration.(In a later section, describing the “extravagant masquerade ornaments” of masks and skin costumescovering the entire person, Douglas remarks in a footnote that this “reflection in the text may furnishthe admirers of Herodotus, in particular, with an excellent apology for some of his wonderful talesof this sort” [Douglas II, 307].) The new world, in short, is the appropriate field for suchethnographic fieldwork, and, once again, knowledge is cumulative: Douglas’ text presents itself asparticipating in a scholarly tradition simultaneously progressing beyond and sanctified by itsillustrious Classical precedent.120But these comments apply to Douglas’ edition, and I have made much of the discrepanciesbetween the first published edition and Beaglehole’s scholarly edition of 1967, which presents, asusual, a much different perspective on Cook’s perspective on the question of hair.Their hair is black or dark brown, straight, strong and long, in general they wear itflowing, but some tie it up in a bunch on the crown and others twist it into large locksand add to it false hair, so that thier [sic] heads looks [sic] like a swab. But when theyare full drissed [sic], they powder their [hair] with the white down of birds, which forthe most part they carry about with them in thier [sic] Canoes, either in a box orbag.* Some have pretty large and long beards and others very little, the differenceproceeds from their plucking more or less out of it. (Beaglehole III: 1, 311 -2)Aside from a general disregard for consistent spelling and syntactic agreement, this passage revealsa focus not on theories regarding immutable characteristics of ‘nature,’ but instead on the external,observable aspects attributable to culture. The scientific method here consists of the scholarlyapparatus providing corroboration in the form of supplementary observation from another source,which serves to establish not the credibility or truth-claim of Cook’s narrative, but the scholarlycredibility of Beaglehole’ s text.This treatment of facial hair, however different in focus, simultaneously reveals what Douglasand Beaglehole have in common: “a very familiar, widespread, and stable form of ‘othering.’ Thepeople to be othered are homogenized into a collective ‘they,’ which is distilled even further in aniconic ‘he’ (the standardized adult male specimen)” (Pratt, “Scratches” 139). Presumably this accountof beards applies only to the men, yet the unqualified ‘they’ gives no indication that the crucialquestion of hair and hairlessness and the methods of hair removal applies only to men -- until a newparagraph in Douglas’ edition signals that this is indeed the case:The women are nearly of the same size, colour, and form, with the men; from whomit is not easy to distinguish them, as they possess no natural delicacies sufficient torender their persons agreeable; and hardly any one was seen, even amongst those whowere in the prime of life, who had the least pretensions to be called handsome.(Douglas II, 303)121In one sentence, Douglas summarises the appearance of Nootka women (in contrast to the two longparagraphs in the footnote concerning beards). The description of the women in Beaglehole’ s editionprovides more specific details about their appearance:And they as also all others who visited us are, both men and Women, of a smallStature, some, Women in particular, very much so and hardly one, even of theyounger sort, had the least pretensions to being call’d beauties. Their face is ratherbroad and flat, with highish Cheek bones and plump cheeks. (Beaglehole 111:1, 311)In this comment, the women may be seen alternatively as sandwiched between general conmientsabout the universal male, or as referred to specifically. The difference in reading depends upon theassumed antecedent of the pronoun “their”: does it refer back to the women and thus continue talkingabout them, or instead refer further back to the presumed universality of male experience?Beaglehole’ s footnotes tend to support the latter view, and suggest that the pronouns are being usedas if gendered. “They’ refers always to the general, or male (as in the French ‘us’), while referencesto the women will always be specific, referring to their difference from the men.’4As is often the case, Beaglehole’s footnotes reveal more than the main text, as this example,a rather lengthy comment from Bayly on the subject of the women’s appearance, demonstrates:‘The women appeared to be much less in stature than the men, not so well featuredhaving high cheake bones & otherwise very ordinary--which together with them beingsmeared over with grease & dirt rendered them not very desirable but rather thereverse--so that our Seamen seemed quite easy about them. Indeed some of theofficers whose stomachs were less Dillicate purchased the favours of some of them,but at a high price to what was generally given at any other place we have been at,for the men seemed rather unwilling to let them out except for something theywanted, which they could not otherwise get at, & even this was practised only amongthe lower class of them. The better sort would not hear anything of the kind.’ Withwhich compare Samwell, p. 1095 below. (Beaglehole 111:1, 311)The reference to Samwell puts a rather different spin on Bayly’ s account, since the account of theship’s surgeon (in part two of Beaglehole’ s third volume) describes in much greater detail the sexualtraffic between the ships and the people of Nootka Sound (the men, as Bayly notes, negotiating with122the Englishmen wishing to purchase the favours of Nootka women). Indeed, Samwell’s account ofthe “ceremony of purification,” the bathing of young women aboard ship as a prelude to sexualencounter, clarifies a rather oblique statement made by Cook above, that “in particular cases, when[paint and dirt] were rubbed off, the whiteness of the skin appeared almost to equal that ofEuropeans.” Thus the women of Nootka Sound are either invisible in the text (and in the context oftheir society to the Englishmen aboard the Resolution and the Discovery) or present, visible, only assexual beings.A Digression, concerning Sexual PoliticsPeter Hulme argues that this invisibility of women except in a sexual context is partof the process by which the whole enterprise of European encounter with the new world issexualised: “the novelty of America was always perceived in overtly sexual terms. To speakof the ‘maidenhead’ of Guiana or Virginia was to condense into one potent image the absenceof significant native agriculture and the joyful masculine thrust of Elizabethan expansion”Isee figure 2.5] (158-9). Whether that “thrust” is made by a King or the representatives ofa Virgin Queen (in the sixteenth century),the cosiness of this colonial romance is inevitably distorted by theunfortunate presence of the other parties who were there beforehand andwho could only be seen as, at best, recalcitrant fathers or brothers holdingback the love-match, at worst already the husbandry to the ‘virgin’ land.This then was the classical colonial triangle. . . . (Hulme 159)Hulme identifies a discursive method by which the claims of these husbands, fathers, andbrothers to America, personified as a woman (and therefore, by extension, by native womenand their sexual favours15), are negated via tropes marking the natives -- generalised as male-- as savage in some way. He develops his analysis using Samuel Purchas’ representation ofthe so-called Jamestown Massacre of 1622.FIGURE 2.5 America, engraving by Jan van der Straet (Stradanus) (c. 1600). Reproduced fromPeter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1 797 (New York:Methuen, 1986), fig. 1, p. xii.123yfmerwen .‘Imerwus rtxit, (—‘ votma tide Jmptr cxdtam.124Not only can the ‘virgin’ land be savagely raped by its own natives...,but the blood thereby spilt on to its (posterior?) cheeks is that of theEnglish colonies themselves, which are, in the process, identified with theVirginia that has been ravished . . . . the ‘massacre’ has performed amiraculous reversal by which the settlers have become the naturalinhabitants-- identified with the land -- and the original inhabitants havebeen discursively ‘spewed out’ by their own territories. (Hulme 160)Europeans deployed the trope of savagery to disestablish the territorial claim of native peoplesand to establish (simultaneously and consequently) a European claim to possession on thebasis of assumed moral worth: Englishmen will be better husbands to both the native womenand the land personified as female and thus deserve to replace the unworthy (because savage)native men.16This “colonial triangle,” the sexualisation of the European encounter with new worldsin order to establish a European right to ownership (according to European values and laws),also explains a somewhat ambiguous phrase in Douglas’ comment about the colour of theNootka. He describes their colour, when washed, as white, like that of Europeans, but not likethe English. More particularly, the Nootka are “of that pale, effete cast which distinguishesthose of our Southern nations.” Eighteenth-century English literature is replete withreferences to the supposed effrminacy of southern Europeans,full of images ofmincing ‘frogs”and Italian dancing-masters who highlight, by contrast, the full-blooded, often proudlyuncouth masculinity of the English. As B.R. Burg notes in his study of homosexuality amongEnglish pirates in the seventeenth century,Effeminate characteristics. . . were usually ascribed to the hated Spanish,and lumped in with other unpirately qualities such as cowardice andpassivity. ‘But we may confidently presume that these AmericanSpanyards are idle, cowardly, and effeminate people, not exercised, norbrought up, in Warlike discipline,’ observed one Englishman. (Burg 170)Misogynist assumptions about women cross over racial and cultural lines, metaphoricallyextending English superiority and dominance by imaging other groups as female to theEnglish male.125Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s point about shifting class and gender landscapes, in herdiscussion of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental 1ourne,jwars mentioning here. Throughout thatwork, the English traveler Yorick’s most significant and enduring relationship is with hisFrench man-servant, LaFleur, whose dependent status enables Yorick to enjoy the pleasuresof benevolence as well as those of his economic and educational privilege. Although Yorickenvisions this master-servant bond as one of (his own) paternalistic care, LaFleur encouragesand advises him in his pursuit of Madame de L***, thus inverting (at least occasionally) theterms of the father-son dynamic.Yorick is [continually] playing the peasant man [LaFleur] and thearistocratic woman [Madame de L***] off against one another .Without releasing LaFleur from his infantilized role of ‘poor’ incompetent[and dependent], Yorick is nevertheless at the same time submitting tohis erotic advisement, making LaFleur his mentor/father is a complicitrelation to the capture of the desired woman. By involving LaFleur in theplot, not bracketing his lower-class associations but emphasizing andinsisting on them, Yorick is also implicitly reducing -- even insulting --Madame de L***, of whom he has till now been rather frightened.(Sedgwick 71)Madame de L***s status as an aristocratic woman reminds Yorick of the need to confirm bothhis position of superiority to LaFleur, his man-servant, and their common bond, as men,against women. Yorick’s “paternalistic care” of the child/servant LaFleur, like his perceptionof the pastoral life of aged patriarchs as idyllic, picturesque, and above all distant,demonstrates a caring bond between men -- unlike the “consanguinity” hefeels with namelessservant-class women, which inevitably leads to bed (Sedgwick 72).Although Sedgwick argues that “each group Ithat is, peasants and women] is viewedin a way that makes it singularly susceptible to being read through a fantasy of the personal,a fantasy of the middle-class male person” (72), the consequences of this “imaginativeexpropriation” are more serious for women than they arefor peasant groups (which are alwayspresided over,for Yorick, by a man): “if not personal servants, Iwomen of the working classes]are vendors of personal linen, or of gloves, or precisely of sexual services” (73). (Of course,126the most telling image of a male world united across class in dangerous pursuit of theunprotected woman -- unprotected by status or family as well as by cultural values andideologies --from eighteenth-century fiction is Pamela, in Samuel Richardson’s novel of thatname 11740-21.) The traveler -- the person -- is necessarily male: ‘for an Englishman (or inour century, an American) to travel for pleasure -- especially to poor areas or countries -- isto requisition whole societies in the service offantasy needs. This is perhaps especially trueof sexual fantasy” (Sedgwick 73).Sedgwick’s discussion of Sterne’s novel presents the male traveler’s narrative as agenre which necessarily functions as a sex tour, reifying homosocial male bonds throughsexual relations between women and men as well as through social relations of dominance andsubmission between men. In scientific travel narratives such as Cook’s Voyages, the trafficin women remains relatively invisible (at least in official versions); however, assumptions ofEuropean superiority (on the part of readers if not on the part of Cook, his officers, and crew)and the very notion of trade relations locate indigenous traders (presumably, men) ininsubordinate positions, as servants or merchants offering goods and services to Englishmen.And the metaphor of effeminacy in the word “effete” relocates the men of Nootka Sound fromthe realm of manly endeavour and activity -- associated with such qualities as bravery,strength, and vitality -- to the female realm of softness, weakness, and indolence. Perhaps thefocus on beardlessness in Douglas’ edition gathers extra force as a result: that the faces ofNootka men (in contrast to the hairy or clean-shaven English) are as soft and smooth as thoseof women may confirm their effeteness. In the colonial love-triangle, thisftminising of Nootkamen removes them as potential threats to the English suitors no less effectively than the tropeof savagery.127My analysis to this point, however, remains locked within heterosexual assumptionswhich need questioning. As Burg reminds me, homosexual acts if not identities were anaccepted part of shipboard life on long oceanic voyages, which producedan environment where homosexual preferences or the commission ofhomosexual acts were common, opportunities for heterosexual contactswere few or entirely absent, and there was little alternative to remaining[on board ship] ... . Under these circumstances, situational homosexualbehavior was obviously a feature of life at sea for some just as it is afeature of any isolated and enduring male group, but it was only onefacet of shipboard sexual activity. Most of the men who sailed aboard theNavy’s ships were volunteers, and it is likely enough that the all-maleatmosphere was the very feature of Royal Navy life that brought aportion of each ship’s crew into His Majesty’s service. For these men, thehomosexuality they practiced was clearly a preference rather than anexpedient. (53-4)After all, in the eighteenth century, as the saying goes, it was “rum, sodomy, and the lash”that made the British Navy great.17 Perhaps the “repressive hypothesis” with whichFoucault opens his History of Sexuality -- about the supposedly greater flexibility and fluidityof sexual possibilities before the codification of notions of sexual identity (firmly entrenchedby the nineteenth century), is instructive here (11). It may be that in Cook’s journals theword “effete” and the whole notion of beardlessness is meant to suggest boyishness and notjust effeminacy18-- a process by which Nootka men as “other” could be constructed in termsof one kind of hornoerotic attraction rather than heterosexual rivalry. This is the leap-off toa whole other sexual politic, about which, at this time, i can only speculate.On the Convergence of the TwainThis feature of the scientific discourse of ethnography-- the erasure of women in every aspectof a society except their sexual role by the universalisation of male experience -- leads me back tothe question of aesthetics. Although I began this chapter by treating science as a branch of learningdistinct from, indeed in opposition to, art, the two discourses are not so easily differentiated from each128other in the text of Cook’s journals. The textual treatment of the women of Nootka Soundexemplifies this interdependence. In Douglas’ edition of the Voyage, the women merit one shortparagraph comparing them to Nootka men and European women; the relation on both counts is oneof inferiority. Their “persons,” possessing neither “natural delicacies” nor “the least pretensions tobeing called handsome,” fail to meet European standards of feminine beauty. Their invisibility in thetext is clearly demonstrated in the relative weight Douglas accords the women in contrast to beards.At the aesthetic or visual level, this female insignificance is represented in Webber’ s portraitsof a Nootka man and a Nootka woman [figures 2.6 and 2.7], reproduced in Lionel Kearns’Convergences accompanied by the following meditation:The manipulation of words and images on the page is the manipulation of audience,and you know who that is. Yet this is never done without a purpose. John Webber,in turning his sketches into engravings for publication with the authorized version ofthe voyage, removed the conical shaped cedar hat with the little bulb on top from thehead of the Nootka man and put it on the head of the Nootka woman, though he hadnever seen a Nootka woman wearing a hat like that. Notice the woven images of thewhales and the harpooners’ canoes. It is a nobleman’s hat. Webber has made thechange for us, so that we may be able to view both the hat and the tattooed designon the man’s forehead. Such textual liberties, even when taken by me, are entirely foryour edification, I assure you. (n.p.)The difference between ‘to see’ and ‘to view’ is crucial here: the verb “view” recalls the distancingeffect of landscape appreciation. Perceived as tableau, landscape is something to look at rather thana place to be in. Similarly, viewing the particulars of the individuals in Webber’ s portraits establishesa distance between viewer and viewed, a relationship not of interaction but of observation. (Scientificnaming sets up a similar distance: unlike Doctor Doolittle, who “talks with the animals,” the scientisttalks about them.) Presumably this woman is not tattooed, or if she is -- and I have no way ofknowing -- her tattoos are considered to be of less consequence than those of the man whose hat shewears, since she has already been accounted for by the generalised male specimen.AI129FIGURE 2.6 A Man of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, c. 178 13. Reproduced from Joppien,plate 114, p. 96.FIGURE 2.7 A Woman of Nootka Sound, by John Webber, c. 1781-3. Reproduced from Joppien,plate 112, p. 94.130— I4131Webber in fact imported the nobleman’s hat on the woman’s head from his full-length portrait,A Native prepared for Hunting [figure 2.8]. The visual quotation of, or borrowing from, his ownwork reveals some of the problems of ethnographic discourse:The title [A Native prepared for Hunting] seems to have been invented by the artist,and already spelt out in his Catalogue (no. 65), disagreeing with the fact that little orno hunting occurred during the ships’ stay. The arrows and quiver carried by theIndian, however, may have given that impression. Of special interest is the basketryhat with a bulbous top decorated with a whaling scene. Hats of this kind were wornby chieftains when whaling. (Joppien 90)The expectation of mimesis in ethnography as a scientific discourse breaks down: the totality of thedrawing, image and title, presents Webber’s assumptions as if they were documentary.The original sketch of the woman wearing the nobleman’s hat “had shown her wearing a hatwith a flattened top [figure 2.9], Webber not knowing ‘that only chiefs wore these hats’. This is themore ironic, since it was the ethnographic element that constituted the raison d’être for the engravedportraits” (Joppien 9 1-2). Joppien and Smith make the point that Webber added red water-colour tothe face in A Man of Nootka Sound [figure 2.6] “to give the portrait more ‘truth,” that is, tocorroborate the verbal descriptions; in the sketch of a different man [figure 2.10], “whose foreheadwas painted with wavy lines, Webber used black and red chalk effectively” (Joppien 92). Joppienand Smith apparently feel that the portraits of men convey ethnographic information more accurately,maybe as the result of the sexual politics affecting the contexts in which the portraits were developed.They suggest that the woman’s ‘clean and bright” face, absent of any of the ochre markings describedin the text, might be a result of the “ceremony of purification,’ or washing, that the sailors gave theNootka women who came on board ship (Joppien 92). Perhaps that context -- prostitution and thecorresponding demotion of the women so engaged from woman to object in European values --affected Webber’s decision to give the woman the hat with the bulbous instead of the flattened top.Perhaps, as Joppien and Smith suggest, the exchange was made because “the hat was not only a:‘:FIGURE 2.8 A Native prepared for Hunting, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced fromJoppien, plate 111, p. 93.132FIGURE 2.9 A Woman ofNootka Sound, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien,plate 113, p. 95.133....4—•4•1SL-fl..•:-1i./ . .: .y;-v..‘? N . 1’.;-‘ . ?q.1FIGURE 2.10 A Man ofNootka Sound, by John Webber, April 1778. Reproduced from Joppien,134plate 115, p. 97.135spectacular object, it was also an excellent example of Indian craft. In order to do justice to[Nootkan] skill, it was included, as was the circular cedarbark rain cape, adorned with a fur collar’(Joppien 92). Whatever the reason, the readers who are promised, and expect, a transparent accountof the people of Nootka Sound instead receive one which is coloured by the artist’s (and editors’)other considerations and designs.The visual, like the verbal, representation of the empirical observation of land and people isknowledge with a purpose: as Pratt notes, it is “a normalizing discourse, whose work is to codifydifference, to fix the Other in a timeless present where all ‘his’ actions and reactions are repetitionsof ‘his’ normal habits” (Pratt, “S” 139). The language and conventions of scientific objectivityremove the subjects (or objects) of discussion from any context which might make their observablequalities meaningful, as well as from any interaction which would bring them out from under thewatchful gaze of the recording subject. “[H]omogenized into a collective ‘they,” the observed Othersare “the subject[s] of verbs in a timeless present tense” (Pratt, “S’ 139); anything ‘they’ do istherefore presented as standardised, unmediated by circumstance or particularity, and a pure andsimple representation of innate and immutable characteristics.For example, the absence of European-style table manners is proof to Douglas’ Cook of theIndians’ savagery:Their manner of eating is exactly consonant to the nastiness of their houses andpersons; for the troughs and platters, in which they put their food, appear never tohave been washed from the time they were first made, and the dirty remains of aformer meal are only sweeped away by the succeeding one. They also tear everythingsolid, or tough, to peices, with their hands and teeth; for though they make use oftheir knives to cut off the larger portions, they have not, as yet, thought of reducingthese to smaller peices and mouthfuls, by the same method, though obviously moreconvenient and cleanly. But they seem to have no idea of cleanliness; for they eat theroots which they dig from the ground, without so much as shaking off the soil thatadheres to them. (Douglas II, 323-4)136The charge of animalism or brutishness hinted at by the word “trough” is confirmed by the tone anddiction of the rest of the passage. However, as Lawrence Stone notes in his social history of England,anxieties about cleanliness and privacy, determining the use of individual knives and forks, did notcommonly replace the practice of sharing food from central portions until the late seventeenth century(Stone 256-7). Such a code of manners would therefore be only one or two generations old byCook’s time. While one or two generations may be an eternity from the perspective of enculturation,the two centuries between then and now allow me -- especially remembering the conditions aboardship and European hygenic standards of the day -- to question or problematise just how ‘advanced’the Europeans actually were, or thought they were, relative to the native peoples they encountered.Such a “hegemonic othering” (Fromm 396) creates the notion of the primitive in the colonialcontext: ethnographic discourse often describes indigenous peoples as somehow still living in amythic past. Gould discusses this characterisation of different races representing the different stagesof human development in the work of nineteenth-century French anatomist Etienne Serres, whobelieved that “the perfectibility of lower races distinguished humans as the only species subject toimprovement by its own efforts,” yet “worked to document the signs of inferiority among lower racesAdult blacks, he argued, should be like white children, adult Mongolians like white adolescents”(Gould 40). A notion of time which equates Western European history with such culturally-specificvalues as ‘progress’ problematises much writing about contact between Europeans and non-Europeanpeoples. In Ecological Imperialism, for example, Crosby notes[t]he geographical avant-garde of humanity, the pioneers isolated in Australia and theAmericas, had different histories [from the technological avant-garde of humanity, thepeoples of the crossroads of the Old World, the Middle East]. The AustralianAborigines kept to their Paleolithic ways; they did not smelt metals or build cities.When Captain Cook and the Australians of Botany Bay looked at each other in theeighteenth century, they did so from opposite sides of the Neolithic Revolution. (18)137Although I have taken this statement out of the context of Crosby’s larger argument, it suggests theways in which the moment of contact, in which describer and described occupy the same time andplace, is erased. And when European realities are taken as the norm, the result is often theimplication that the natives are inferior to Europeans, given their failure to move in the samedirections, ways, and speeds as European civilisation.Kupperman’s study presents another picture, documenting European dependence on Indiantechnology for survival: early colonists in America (1580 to 1640) were utterly reliant on “Indian helpin coping with the environment, particularly for food” (100).A more or less constant theme in their writings was the belief that the Indians werebetter adapted to life in America than the English were. Though the writers believedin the general superiority of English technology, they were clearly aware of the factthat they would have to learn from the Indians in order to survive. (106)In fact, Kupperman states, only the armchair expert who had never been to America or seen Indiansassigned them “to a place outside the ranks of full humanity” (106).Be that as it may until 1640, the intervening century and a half of voyages of discovery,colonisation, imperialism, and slavery reinforced the woridview of European superiority, given thatthe conmients attributed to Cook in the first published edition on the inferiority of the natives’technology stress European superiority which his descriptions do not necessarily support:The woollen garments . . . have the strongest resemblance to woven cloth. But thevarious figures which are very artificially inserted in them, destroys the suppositionof their being wrought in a loom; it being extremely unlikely, that these people shouldbe so dextrous as to be able to finish such a complex work, unless immediately bytheir hands. They are of different degrees of fineness; some resembling our coarsestrags or blankets; and others almost equal to our finest sorts, or even softer, andcertainly warmer. (Douglas II, 325)Even this compliment is backhanded at best: the people who produce such beautiful work aresimultaneously considered too stupid to design a tool to achieve it; they must of necessity use theirhands, technology being a mark of civilisation or ‘progress.’ At the same time, the concerns or138assumptions of an English reading audience are priorised: if Nootkan blankets are “softer, andcertainly warmer” than “our finest sorts,” under what conditions could they be said to be only “almostequal”? From a warm armchair by the fire, perhaps; certainly not in a context where the tightnessof a blanket’s weave (and presumably the degree to which it repels rain) and its softness are crucialto bodily comfort. Even this praise, however tentative or qualified, reveals an assumption of nativeintellectual and technological inferiority: Cook, or Douglas, continually comments on a variety ofthings so finely wrought he thinks no Indian could be capable of making them. (These are evidentlyDouglas’ opinions, however, for Beaglehole’s Cook makes no such evaluation.)Douglas’ edition of Cook’s Voyage reveals a good deal more about the preoccupations ofEnglish culture in the eighteenth century than it does about the peoples and customs observed andrecorded. What seems to me most crucial, however, is the way that aesthetic and scientificrepresentations of the inhabitants of Nootka Sound -- although far from internally consistent-- aremutually supportive. Individually, each presents an account of Nootka Sound and its inhabitants thatits discursive or disciplinary truth-claims (disinterestedness, objectivity, mimesis) establish as fact --in nature -- by hiding their own creation. Webber’s portraits, offered as ethnographic truths,consciously alter, edit, or distort what he actually perceived in order to convey ethnographicinformation. Natural history as a discourse offers a metaphoric version of reality as transparent andmimetic. Taken together, their effect is staggering: the information or knowledge about NootkaSound that they offer is implicated in an imperial history of power and consciousness, possibly ofpower as European consciousness. What they also offer, however, is a history of their ownreification, the hyper-accumulation of meaning in the text -- particularly its scholarly apparatus. Sowhat I am tracing becomes the history of an idea through Douglas and Beaglehole’s invocations,139omissions, and editorial choices. Particularly, the scholarly apparatus itself becomes the product, whatcan be known: ideas with traceable lineages have value.As Cook’s -- or Douglas’-- comments on Nootkan table manners and technology suggest,differences between Englishmen and Nootka are cited-- by the English -- as evidence of Europeansuperiority: in appearance, in manners, in living arrangements, in religion, in economy, in technology,in short in everything important to a European sense of identity. Demonstrating, again and again,English superiority to the native inhabitants of the Sound serves to establish and then disestablishrights of ownership, which are in opposition even in this first encounter, as one incident in particularexemplifies: Captains Cook and Clerke are surprised by the reaction of the Nootka when they go tothe village to cut some grass as food for the animals on board ship:No people had higher Ideas of exclusive property; they made the Captain pay for thegrass which he cut at the Village, although useless to themselves, & made a merit,after being refusd payment for the wood & water we got in the Cove, of giving it tous, & often told us that they had done it out of Friendship. (King 1407)In Douglas’ edition, Cook’s account of this incident is much longer, and concludes:Here I must observe, that I have no where, in my several voyages, met with anyuncivilized nation, or tribe, who had such strict notions of their having a right to theexclusive property of every thing that the country produces, as the inhabitants of thissound. (Douglas II, 284)For a change, the opinion expressed by Cook in Beaglehole’s edition does not differ significantlyfrom that in Douglas,’ with the exception of one crucial word: Beaglehole’s Cook does not write“uncivilized.”Here I must observe that I have no were [sic] met with Indians who had such highnotions of every thing the Country produced being their exclusive property as these.(Beaglehole 111:1, 306)Having established a particular kind of trading relationship-- based on the exchange of goods andservices, no questions asked about the potential use or need for the items exchanged-- the Cook of140Douglas’ edition seems surprised that the Nootka expect to continue the established pattern, or eventhat they fail to read his mind and know the basis of trade on his terms. Accordingly, he assumesthat trading occurs on his terms, failing to recognise that the Nootka might have their own agendaor rules governing trade relations. Ledyard’ s description also makes the importance of this incidentin determining ownership of the land and its resources obvious: ‘They intimated to us that the countryall round further than we could see was theirs” (Ledyard 72).It is here that the narrative turns: the natives at King George’s Sound, unlike those of theSouth Seas, “betray . . . aukward bashfulness & Timidity” (Samwell 1090) and refuse to make Cookinto a god (although one wonders . .. ). Suddenly their “industrious . . . thefts” (Clerke 1328) and“legerdemain Tricks” (Samwell 1091) begin to make sense: the natives here, for whom stealing isindustry, are perhaps ignoble rather than noble savages after all. This suspicion is confirmed witheven the mention of the possiblity of cannibalism-- the narrative and ideological means by which theNootka can be displaced and the land claimed as the possession of Europe.141Chapter ThreeCook and the Cannibals: Nootka Sound, 1778The official 1784 edition of Cook’s journals gives the impression that the party encounteredone group of cannibals after another. European readers of the time eagerly consumed such reportsof cannibalism and assumed they were true. However, critical analysis of the evidence in Cook’s textand its predecessors suggests that the origins of cannibal practices are textual rather than cultural oreven behavioural. A preoccupation with cannibalism characterises exploration and discovery literatureas a genre; writers familiar with this trope in the works of Herodotus, Mandeville, Columbus, andHakluyt reinscribed it. Cook’s journals participate in this tradition, both revealing the influence ofthe cannibal trope and (seemingly) confirming its basis in reality for subsequent writers.Cook’s Voyages have elicited scandal and sensation for one reason or another ever sinceHawkesworth’s edition of the first voyage published in 1773. The furor over this first edition roseout of “those salacious passages and possible theological heresy” concerning the “public amours”of Tahitian maidens (Abbott 155). In Douglas’ editorial hands, cannibalism assumed greaterimportance than moral relativism as the mark of the exotic Other in the second and third voyages,particularly in the representation of Maori. Nigel Rigby’ s “Sober Cannibals and Drunken Christians”demonstrates the continuing importance of this whole question in post-colonial criticism.Cook’s first reports of the cannibalism of the Maoris were doubted in England, andled him to conduct a macabre experiment on his second voyage with the inhabitantsof New Zealand. A piece of human flesh was broiled ‘for one of these cannibals [to]eat it with a seeming good relish before the whole ships Company.’ The doubts shownabout the existence of cannibalism demonstrate that the eighteenth century’s viewsabout the original state of humankind had altered from Hobbes’ s view that savage‘man’ lived in a brutish manner. The influence of the philosophes had created analtogether more favourable concept of savagery. The ‘discovery’ of the Pacific helpedto bring about a further reassessment. A year after Cook’s experiment, a boat’s crewfrom Captain Furneaux’s ship, which had become separated from Cook, was killedand eaten by the Maoris; presumably with an equally good relish. (173)142This passage demands the question: where did Cook get a “piece of human flesh” to broil? And bywhat bizarre manner of projection does the conductor of such a “macabre experiment” accuse hisexperimental subjects (objects?) of savagery? Rigby’s point both describes and enacts an exercisein Western logic: initial European doubts regarding the charge of Maori cannibalism are satisfactorilyresolved (the doubt disproved and the underlying belief proved) thanks to the man of science. Asa result, the assumption that Maori ate Furneaux’ s men went, and remained, unquestioned. Thisthought-process (about Pacific cultures) finds a parallel in European philosophy: from Hobbesianassumptions of brutishness, to Enlightenment ideals about ‘noble savages,’ to calm acceptance ofdepravity thanks to “the ‘discovery’ of the Pacific.” This mirroring reminds me of what I might callan imperialism of grammar: Rigby’ s negative rhetorical strategy, which disproves initial Europeandisbelief, ultimately confirms Hobbes’ notion of savagery instead of Enlightenment views regardingcommon humanity. Compositional standards of logical progression and parallelism have made a pointthat Rigby simultaneously and consciously challenges. The fact that such a mirroring occurs in acritical post-colonial analysis of cannibalism reveals the difficulties and problematics inherent in thewhole field of study. It is as if the linguistic and intellectual tools Rigby has to work with compelhim by their very structure to say what he wants to unsay. The struggle of writing against the grain,of wresting words and ideas from their well-developed context of domination (without merelyinverting or otherwise reinscribing that domination) is one I face too.The idea of Maori cannibalism -- of which the disappearance of Furneaux’ s men is commonlycited as proof -- is still current; I’ve heard several references to this incident, yet I remainunconvinced.’ Instead, I want to argue that cannibalism is a discourse, a way of talking about butalso a way of reading the new world. The following quotation, a reading of a visual account fromthe third voyage, illustrates my point:143Let us return to Webber’s second major set-piece of the voyage, Captain Cook inShip’s Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound [figure 3.1]. Cook is presented shaking a Maorichief by the hand, a European mode of greeting it is unlikely he would have proferredsince he knew well enough that nose rubbing was the traditional Maori greeting. Nordoes the scene confirm the written evidence of any of the journals. For, on enteringShip’s Cove on this occasion, Cook found the Maori afraid to come aboard, thoughmany of them knew him well from his previous visits. They were afraid he had cometo avenge the massacre of Furneaux ‘s men, eight of whom had been killed and eatenat Grass Cove nearby, on the previous voyage. With Omai as interpreter, however,friendly relations were quickly established with the parties visiting the ships.Yet there is no evidence that the obvious reading of this composition records anactual event. That is to say, Cook did not on this occasion come off his landing boatand go up and shake a Maori chief by the hand. By all accounts the portion of thebeach they landed on was unoccupied--a natural precaution in any case--and it wasnot until a little later that a party of the Maori came and set up some temporaryhabitations nearby. It is indeed true that friendly relations were established on thisoccasion quickly enough, and this may be credited to Cook’s practical good sense;true, too, that all we should expect from a record of an historical event rendered inthe mode of a history painting is the general spirit of the occasion, not evidence asto what actually occurred. But my point is that in staging the event in this way,Webber is addressing a British, indeed a European audience. (Smith, IP 202-4, myemphasis)The disappearance of Furneaux’ s men leads inevitably to the conclusion-- by the search party andby history -- that they have not only been murdered (“massacred,” in Smith’s account), but also, andmore significantly, cannibalised: the absence of Furneaux’ s men equals the presence of cannibalismto Smith in 1992 as well as to Cook’s party in 1777, his editor Douglas in 1784, and thecontemporary European public. And yet: “there is no evidence that the obvious reading of thiscomposition records an actual event.” The history painting preserves “the general spirit of theoccasion, not evidence as to what actually occurred,” Smith notes, to qualify the discrepancy betweenwhat did occur, or may have occurred, and a representation of what did not occur as if it did. Andyet, while there is no visual representation of the disappearance/massacre/cannibal feast of Furneaux’ smen, the written accounts endlessly read cannibalism into disappearance, forcing their audiences inturn to read cannibalism and about cannibalism.Not all of Cook’s cannibals were to be found in the South Pacific. Although Cook’s partyFIGURE 3.1 Captain Cook in Ship Cove, QueenCharlotte Sound, by John Webber February 1777-.Reproduced from Joppien, plate 17, p. 17.144145met another cultural group across the beach at Nootka Sound in 1778,2 history has presented us withonly oneperspective on this encounter: that of Cook, whose 1784 journal defines the Natives ofNootka Sound by using the trope of cannibalism. Like the officers and crewmen under him, Cookread the northwest coast of North America through a double filter, using the perceptual tools ofEurope and those formed over the course of his naval experience in the South Pacific. Here I needto differentiate between Cook and his journals, or between the tropes produced by Cook and thetropes of Cook produced by editors and historians, since Beaglehole’s 1967 scholarly edition of thejournals indicates that Cook himsef did not ascribe cannibalism to the Nootka. The account of themonth at Nootka Sound, then, reveals how the already well-established European discourse ofcannibalism in so-called savage lands lent itself to the appropriation of those lands from peoplesidentified as cannibals.Tracing the Holy GrailDavid Spurr’s mapping and genealogy of colonial discourses first identifies and then tracesthe operations of twelve basic rhetorical modes; “taken together,” he claims, “these constitute a kindof repertoire for colonial discourse, a range of tropes, conceptual categories, and logical operationsavailable for purposes of representation” (3). Many of the tropes are familiar to readers of travel andexploration literature, and to readers of this dissertation, which examines the European appropriation,aestheticisation, classification, and eroticisation of the new-world Other. Cannibalism, thoughfrequently mentioned in narratives and scholarly accounts of travel and exploration, rarely meritstreatment as a discourse or trope on its own; it tends to be subsumed under the general category ofsavagery. Unlike nakedness or hunter-gatherer economies, however, cannibalism has retained itsstatus as an ultimate emblem of the savage for some twenty-five centuries of European writing about146foreign cultures. It might be considered too sensational for the kind of academic institutionalisationenjoyed by aesthetic, scientific, and historical discourses, but it retains a hold on the European andNorth American imagination nonetheless.3 Cannibalism has played a supporting role in othercolonial discourses for centuries; at the same time, by its very presence it demands attention as aseparate discourse constructed by influential texts of travel and exploration writing. Cook, his crew,his editor, and his audience were familiar with this discourse, indeed considered it essential tonarratives about savage peoples; accordingly, to some extent Cook’s Voyages not only wrote thediscourse of cannibalism, but were also written by it, and so gained a readership. Cannibalism as aEuropean discourse creates an Other by which the self can be fashioned and known and by whichsocial priorities and an existing hierarchy can be reconfinned.“Herodotus, who is often thought of as the first recorder of other cultures, felt compelled toinform his readers in the fifth century B.C. that some unknown people, far beyond the pale ofcivilization, resorted to this custom,’ in the first standard European text of cannibalism (Arens 10).In a work obsessed with the question of national boundaries, written during the decline of the PersianEmpire and the corresponding rise of the Greek, cannibalism functions as a cultural marker whichdefines the insider against the outsider, the self against the other. Michel de Certeau discusses thisfunction in Book Four of Herodotus’ History, on the Scythians:It combines a representation of the other (which places in opposition the Scythiannomad and the Athenian city-dweller, or the barbarian no-place and the Greekoikoumenè) and the fabrication and accreditation of the text as witness of the other.It is in describing the Scythians that Herodotus’ text constructs a place of its own. Byspecifying the operations which produce a ‘barbarian’ space as distinct from Greekspace, he multiplies the utterative markings (‘I saw,’ ‘I heard,’ etc.) and modalities(it is obvious, doubtjld, inadmissable, etc.) which, with regard to the ‘marvels’recounted (the thôma), organize the place at which he would like to make himselfheard and believed. An image of the other and the place of the text are simultaneouslyproduced. (68)Simultaneously produced, but also causally produced: it is in the representation of the other that the147place of the text is produced, so that ‘discourse about the other is a means of constructing a discourseauthorized by the other” (de Certeau 68).In The History, there are two types of cannibalism, which set up the question of insider andoutsider in different ways. The first sort of cannibalism is a socially-sanctioned custom amongst theMassagetae and a tribe of Indians Herodotus calls Padaei. In a passage immediately preceded by adescription of the sexual customs (his comment that “each of them marries a wife, but the wives theyhave in common” makes it clear that he examines other cultures from the vantage point of patriarchy),Herodotus describes the cannibalism of the Massagetae:There is no definite limit to life other than this: when a man grows very old, all hisrelatives come together and kill him, and sheep and goats along with him, and stewall the meat together and have a banquet of it. That is regarded as the happiest lot;any man who dies of disease they do not eat, but bury him in the ground, lamentingthat he did not come to being eaten. (1, 216, 130)The Padaei kill and eat not only the elderly, but also those who fall sick, before their bodies wasteaway to spoil the banquet. Here my language is much more value-laden than that of Herodotus inGrene’s translation, which simply concludes: “when a man comes to old age, they kill him and makea banquet of him; but not many of the people come to be of this kind because, before that, they fallsick and are, everyone, killed” (III, 99, 255).The observing recorder and the reader of his account are outside of the social systemengaging in this practice. However, the question of sexual customs is also crucial: the Massagetaenot only eat their fellows and hold wives in common, but they are also ruled by a woman: “the Kingof the Massagetae was dead, and his wife had taken over the sovereignty; her name was Tomyris. Toher Cyrus sent and would have wooed her -- in word -- to be his wife. But Tomyris, who understoodthat it was not herself that he was wooing but the kingship of the Massagetae, said no to hisapproaches” (I, 205,126). Herodotus’ description of the Massagetae custom of feasting on each other148concludes an account of the desire of Cyrus (the king of Persia) to conquer the Queen and possessthe territory, embarking on a territorial war (which he lost). Sexual and territorial conquests aremerged in his wooing; however, failing marital possession, the means Cyrus tries to achieve theterritorial conquest is culinary. He leaves the lesser part of his army within easy reach of theMassagetae (as “sitting ducks’), along with a feast of baked meats and drugged wine. After defeatingthe Persians, the Massagetae devour the feast but fall into a drugged slumber, only to be attacked bythe rest of the Persian army. Perhaps this Persian strategy inspired its reversal in the Greeks’ TrojanHorse ploy: instead of the Greek army emerging from the belly of the horse, the Persian food in thebellies of the Massagetae is the means of defeat. And as the Massagetae bodies incorporate Persianfood, so their country is incorporated or swallowed by the Persian empire.The other form of cannibalism in Herodotus’ History marks a societal distinction betweeninside and outside. Cyrus’ son, Cambyses, continues his father’s wars of territorial expansion: afterconquering and establishing a base in Egypt, he starts an expedition to conquer Ethiopia. However,it is unwise, unplanned, and ultimately ill-fated:Before the army had got through one-fifth of their journey, all that they had in theway of provisions entirely failed them; after that they ate the baggage animals, andthen this supply also failed. If, even then, Cambyses had realized and given over thefight and led his army back, he might have been a wise man, even on top of theblunder he made at the beginning; but no, he made no account of all this and marchedever forward. While his soldiers could get anything from the land, they ate grass andmanaged to keep alive. But when they came to the desert, some of them didsomething dreadful. They cast lots and chose one out of every ten men around themand ate him. When Cambyses heard of this, he was afraid -- of the cannibalism -- andabandoned the expedition against the Ethiopians and moved back to Thebes. By thetime he got there, he had lost many of his army. (III, 25, 222)Cambyses’ horror and fear at this behaviour in his own army causes him to re-think his position onthis campaign to Ethiopia. The passage quoted contains its share of qualifiers (“if, even then,” “ifonly”) and the larger context from which it is taken contains many more. The text does not condemn149or ‘other’ the members of the army who engage in cannibalism so much as it encapsulates the fearthat hunger may drive the most resolute into dire consequences: Cambyses’ hunger for Ethiopia andthe resulting disastrous expedition is the macrocosm of the soldiers’ hunger for food and the resultingconsumption of their fellows. Cambyses’ foolish and ill-considered decision to march with inadequateinformation and provisions has, in effect, caused the cannibalism.In Herodotus’ intellectual and methodological descendant, Tacitus’ Germania (C.E. 98), themarvels to be found in far-off lands become increasingly savage and monstrous the further they arefrom the centre of the writer’s known world. Tacitus ends his account of Germania -- already a wildand savage place on the fringes of Rome -- with a portrait of the wildest, most savage tribes on thefringes of Germania: ‘what comes after [the Fenni] is the stuff of fables -- Hellusii and Oxiones withthe faces and features of men, but the bodies and limbs of animals. Of such unverifiable stories I willexpress no opinion,” he concludes, having already made his point (140). Although Tacitus does notmention cannibalism, his Germania -- as an ethnographic essay -- has an important place in thedevelopment of the cannibal trope. Later writers (and readers) not only assumed the existence of suchmarvels and monstrosities, but also came to connect them to the practice of cannibalism, just as theword “barbarian,” originally used to describe someone who was not a Greek, or later someone living“outside the pale of the Roman Empire,” or later of “Christian civilization,” came to be synonymouswith “savage” (“Barbarian”).The Travels of Sir John Mandeville illustrates the marvels-monstrosities-cannibal continuum.It presents a compendium account, a salmagundi of marvels bound together only -- and loosely -- bythe structure of the journey, which encompasses the known world (providing a useful guide to thecity of Jerusalem) as well as the absolutely strange and unfamiliar, for example the “land ofAmazoun, which we call the Maiden Land or the Land of Women” (116-7). The contrast between150Jerusalem as the centre of Christ’s body and therefore as the centre of the known world and theabsolute unknowability of a land where women Jive free of male domination (indeed, free of men)indicates that the social system now known as patriarchy is a feature of the known world. It followsthat the farther one travels from the Holy Land into the unknown, the greater the barbarity andbLoodiness of customs to be found: past an island which Mandeville calls Caffilos is a landwhere the people are of evil customs. They train great dogs to worry men. And whentheir friends are getting near death and they believe they can live no longer, theymake these dogs worry them; for they will not let them die naturally in their beds lestthey suffer too much pain in dying. When they are dead, they eat their flesh insteadof venison. (134)Perhaps familiar with accounts of cannibalism among the Mongols from the works of FranciscansWilliam of Rubrick and John of Piano Carpini,4 the author of The Travels notes the funeral customsin a land subject to the Great Khan: “then the son boils his father’s head, and the flesh from it hedistributes among his special friends, giving each one a little bit, as a dainty. And from the craniumof the head he has a cup made, and he drinks from it all his lifetime in remembrance of his father”(187). At the isle of Lamory, where (unlike European countries) the land is held in common butwomen are not property, the inhabitants eat plump babies as a delicacy (Travels 127).A Digression, concerning SexIt strikes me as sign ficant that what the observer regards as cannibalism in anotherculture is frequently accompanied by what the observer regards as perverse and excessivesexual appetites. Particularly, the idea that women might have sexual agency independentof male ownership or possession and, even worse, the idea that women might have sexualappetites, locates them in a specific place on the European grid explaining female sexuality:as whores. Such a label, and such an understanding of women, cannot be divorced from thepower relations of class and race as well as those of sex. In her study of eighteenth-century151sexual ideology and the English theatre, Kristina Straub makes the point that “the paradigmof the lower-class woman as commodity for the upper-class male contains the troublinglypublic sexuality of many actresses,” generally considered to be little better than if not actuallyprostitutes (91). Accompanying the expectation of the sexual availability to upper-class menof lower-class women was the supporting ideology of their greater sexual appetites in contrastto the more refined and delicate sensibilities of their middle- and upper-class counterparts.In the Pacific of Cook’s voyages, such tropes are played out in the frequent commentsabout the wanton and lascivious gestures of Polynesian women and the brief references to thesexual trade between ship and shore. Whether presented as passive or active participants inthis traffic, the women are somehow responsible; whether their sexual favours are sold by themen of their community (and therefore, to European eyes, by their rightful ‘owners’) or by thewomen themselves, on the morals of its women depend the morals of a nation. If the womenare sexual, unchaste, unclean, so is, by extension, the society they represent.The position of the men is somewhat more ambiguous, because the Europeanownership model of heterosexuality cannot quite fit. (Without the cultural notion of sexualshame, could prostitution exist?) The native men who brought “their” women to the shipswere held in contempt by the ships’ crews and officers anxious to buy the favours of othermen’s sisters, daughters, wives. The notion of the traffic in women conducted between themen on the shore and the men in the ships (as anthropology and Levi-Strauss remind me, thetraffic in women remains the basis of culture5), on the face of it, defines the men as pimps(according to European standards) as surely as the women’s sexuality defines them as whores.But in the colonial context (the soon-to-be-colonial context in Cook’s Pacific), Europeanmetaphors of husbandry and the imaging ofAmerica as a woman whose arms open to welcomethe European explorer require the erasure of the native men who might reasonably expect tobecome husbands to native women. As Peter Hulme argues in Colonial Encounters, the152discourse of some ‘atrocity’ perpetuated by native men is used, in effect, to dispossess themof their territorial right to both land and women -- simultaneously, since the land is imagedfemale.6But native men are not only erased (or denionised) in colonialist texts; they are alsofrequently fenzinised, as the power and sexual hierarchies of the ships come into play. InSodomy and the Pirate Tradition, Burg argues that homosexual encounters and relationshipswere neither unthinkable nor uncommon in the all-male environment of the ship. In fact, hesuggests that in the less rigidly analysed sexual consciousness of the eighteenth century, somecrew members chose long ocean voyages, instead of similar employment closer to home suchas the merchant marine, precisely because of the possibility (even necessity, depending on one’sshipboard status: for cabin boys, there was very little choice in the matter) of homosexualrelations during long periods at sea.7While I have yet to read an account of a sexual encounter between one of Cook’s crewand a native man (or between two men of Cook’s crew, for that matter), Beaglehole’s editionof the third voyage records evidence of homosexual relationships in Hawaii-- not as unusualor remarkable sexual encounters, but as socially accepted and important relationships signalledby the word aikane. Cook himself did not mention it; however, references to aikane by King,Clerke, Samwell, and Ledyard indicate their social, sexual, and political functions. Robert I.Morris argues that although the journal writers tended to eniphasise the sexual role of aikane,the social acceptance and political importance of these young men are clearly indicated as well.For example, on 29 January 1779, David Samwell wrote of Kalani’opu’u’s state visit aboardthe Discovery that[a]nother Sett of Servants of whom he has a great many are called Ikany[aikane] and are of superior rank to Erawe-rawe. Of this Class are Parea[Palea] and Cani-Coah [Kanekoa] and their business is to commit the Sinof Onan upon the old King. This, however strange it may appear, is fact,as we learnt from frequent Enquiries about this curious Custom, and itis an office that is esteemed honourable among them & they have153frequently asked us on seeing a handsome young fellow if he was not anIkany to some of us. (Samwell 1171-72)On February 10th, when Kamehameha came aboard the Discovery for an overnight visit,Samwell wrote that among his attendants was “a Young Man of whom he seems very fond,which does not in the least surprize us as we have had opportunities before of beingacquainted with a detestable part of his Character which he is not in the least anxious toconceal” (1190). Kalani’opu’u was the highest-ranking chief (i) Cook and his officers metat Hawaii; Palea (like Kamehameha, an aikiine of Kalani’opu’u) himself indicated the natureof his aikane relationship to Clerke: “he call’d himsef T’akanee to Terreeoboo IKalani’opu’ul,& mentiond the name of others being the same” (Beaglehole 111:1, 596). (Beaglehole’s note atthe word “T’akanee” defines it as “sodomite. “) Palea’s interactions with the officers indicatethe social and political roles of aikane: “he treats with King as official representative andspokesperson of Kalani’opu’u in the latter’s absence at war. He is often seen as organizer andpoliceman, mediating between Hawaiian crowds and the sailors” (Morris 33). Indeed, one ofCook’s first comments about Hawaii at this time notes that “a well looking young man nam’dPareo [Palea], was soon observ’d to have the most consequence” (Beaglehole 111:1, 502).However, Palea is also a figure around whom an understanding of the social place ofaikane and the events of Cook’s voyage revolve. When Cook’s ships first arrive at Hawaii,Palea as aikane is Kalani’opu’u’s representative; when they return to repair the mast,Kamehameha has become the ali’i’s favourite. As a result, “Palea’s personality has changed;he is now a rogue and provocateur. It is he, the journalists agree, who sets up the incidentof theft and the chain of events that lead ultimately to Cook’s death. Thus, it may be that twoor three of the leading aikne as aikne were crucial in one of the greatest dramas of history”(Morris 33-4). Whether this change in Palea is caused by his loss of political power whenKamehameha replaced him as the chiefs favourite or from sexual jealousy matters less than154the fact that his comments, status, and behaviour confirm and exemplify the various writers’presentation of aikane as a relationship simultaneously personal (affectionate and sexual: theali’i’s lover) and official (social and political: the ali’i’s counsellor and confidante), that thisrelationship was shared by several young men at once, and that it was an accepted part ofHawaiian society -- at the chiefly rank at least.Although King condemns the practice as depriving Hawaiian women “of the naturalaffections of their Husbands, & seeing this divided by the other sex” (Beaglehole 111:1, 624),the journal accounts give no indication that Hawaiians were disturbed in any way. Clerkenoted that “they talk of this infernal practice with all the indfference in the world, nor do Isuppose they imagine any degree of infamy in it (Beaglehole 111:1, 596). Indeed, Samwellrecords that when the ships were finally preparing to sail north again after Cook’s death, anali’i came on board the Resolution, “and seeing a handsome young fellow whose appearancehe liked much, offered six large hogs to the Captain (now Clerke] f he would let him standhis Ikany for a little while” (1226). Ledyard, the only writer who actually used the word“sodomy,” waxed philosophical about aikane relationships:it is a disagreeable circumstance to the historian that truth obliges him toinform the world of a custom among [the Hawaiians] contrary to nature,and odious to a delicate mind... . it would be to omit the most materialand useful part of historical narration to omit it; the custom alluded to isthat of sodomy, which is very prevalent if not universal among the chiefs,and we believe peculiar to them, as we never saw any appearance of itamong the commonalty. As this was the first instance we had ever seenof it in our travels, we were cautious how we credited the firstindications, and waited untill opportunity gave full proof of thecircumstance. The cohabitation is between the chiefs and the mostbeautiful males they can procure about 17 years old, these they callKikuana, which in their language signifies a relation. These youths followthem wherever they go, and are as narrowly looked after as the womenin those countries where jealousy is so predominant a passion; they areextremely fond of them, and by a shocking inversion of the laws ofnature, they bestow all those affections on them that were intended forthe other sex. We did not fully discover this circumstance until near ourdeparture, and indeed lamented we ever had, for though we had no rightto attack or ever to disapprove of customs in general that differed fromour own, yet this one so apparently infringed and insulted the first and155strongest dictate of nature, and we had from education and a diffusiveobservation of the world, so strong a prejudice against it, that the firstinstance we saw of it we condemned a man fully reprobated. Our officersindeed did not insult the chiefs by any means, but our soldiers and tarsto vindicate their own wonderful modesty, and at the same time obligethe insulted women, and recommend themselves to their favours becamesevere arbitrators, and the most valourous defenders and supporters oftheir own tenets. (132-3)Ledyard sets up his discussion with the disclaimer that it is the historian’s duty to tell thetruth, however unpleasant or unsavoury; he also manages to rationalise the crew’s sexualbehaviour as both proof of their manliness and their manly duty to comfort the women --though Clerk noted sourly that “they are profligate to a most shameful degree in theindulgence of their lusts and passions, the Women are much more Common than at any placewe ever saw before” (Beaglehole 111:1 596). However, the most important function ofLedyard’s account is to differentiate between Hawaiian men -- particularly the ali’i -- andEnglishmen on the basis of what is currently called sexual orientation. Morris notes thaton several occasions when the ships were in the vicinity of Hawaii, thecrews had the Articles of War read to them, ostensibly regarding, amongother things, their sexual and commercial intercourse with the Hawaiianwomen . . . . The Articles of War clearly condemned all homosexualbehavior in the Royal Navy and imposed severe criminal penalties onany sailor who was caught engaged in such behavior. (27)Arguably, the connection between these two constructs a moral and sexual difference: the crewmay engage in sexual relations with Hawaiian women, but any sexual activity with Hawaiianmen is criminal. The constant reminder that what is a prominent feature of the highest levelsof Hawaiian society is criminal to Englishmen distinguishes the two groups.Such comments regarding aikane or homosexuality did not make their way into theofficial edition of the Voiiaes (although Ledyard’s account was independently published inthe United States in 1783). Clerke’s opinions regarding the “profligacy” and “commonness”of the Hawaiians did, bringing these sexual dynamics into play in the published account ofthe voyages and thus into cultural circulation in England. The eighteenth-century156assumption that women on the English stage were prostitutes was mirrored by an assumptionof their male counterparts’ homosexuality (Straub 47-8). A growing discourse of homophobiamarked by tropes of “deviance” -- in which “men with male lovers were increasingly beingidentified -- not simply as behaving in a ‘deviate’ manner -- but as being ‘deviate’ in theirpreference for male sexual partners”8 -- is easily exported to distant shores.9 There, desirefor close encounters of the heterosexual kind, assumptions about the sexual mores and moralsofpeoples considered at best exotic and at worst savage, and culture clash and power strugglescoalesce around the conflation of excessive gustatory and sexual appetites, and theirrepresentation in published accounts for the titillation of European readers.Though not all were as careful as he about noting the difference between hearsay and whathe had seen with his own eyes, later travellers borrowed extensively from Mandeville: first appearingin French between 1356 and 1366, the Travels was translated into every major European languageby 1400. It was widely circulated,’° widely anthologized (in Hakluyt, for example”), and widelyread: Columbus prepared for his trip to China by investigating Mandeville’s account and Frobishercarried a copy to Baffin Bay in 1576 (Travels 9). As a text, The Travels exemplifies European travelliterature’s obsessive association of cannibalism (in the guise of its morphological ancestor,anthropophagy’2)with such marvels as humans with the heads of dogs (Travels 134), reported sofrequently that the traveller eventually expects to find them. This whole discourse, however, changesradically with Columbus.Anthropophagite to cannibal: the master narrativeProbably the best-known reference to this custom in English literature comes not from thegenre of travel writing, but instead from Othello, whose hero enthralls Desdemona with his tales “of157the Cannibals, that each other eat, / The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads / Do grow beneaththeir shoulders’ (I,ii). This speech clearly marks Othello with the dangerous exoticism of hisexperience and person (whether played as Moor or African). It also establishes that the connectionbetween the practice of eating human flesh signified by the two terms and other human monstrositiescan be accepted as given by the theatre of Renaissance England. The rupture in language whichproduced two terms for the same practice occurred some hundred years earlier, when “in fourteenhundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.’The 1989 Oxford English Dictionary provides this definition of the term “cannibal” (first usedin English in 1533):originally one of the forms of the ethnic name Carib or Caribes, a fierce nation of theWest Indies, who are recorded to have been anthropophagi, and from whom the namewas subsequently extended as a descriptive term. . . . A man (esp. a savage) that eatshuman flesh; a man-eater, an anthropophagite. Originally the proper name of the man-eating Caribs of the Antilles. (“Cannibal”)The term, and the practice it defines, slips -- just as unquestioningly as it does from the South Seasto the Pacific coast in Cook’s account, or is it Douglas’? -- from “who are recorded to have been”to “proper name of the man-eating Caribs.” The humanity of the cannibal is questioned not only atthe level of ideology, but also at that of diction. Members of the “fierce nation. . . who are recordedto have been” are accorded the relative pronoun used to refer to humans, “who,” as long as theircannibalism remains in the realm of suspicion. Less suspicion and greater certainty is accorded bya relative pronoun which can refer both to people and things in “the man (esp. a savage) that eatshuman flesh”: the man-eater is simultaneously relegated to the status of an object and the dangerousfringes of humanity. The borderline (hinterland?) between the dangerous fringes and the placebeyond the pale of humanity is of crucial importance in maintaining the savagery of cannibal practice:cannibals cannot be regarded as inhuman because “if they were animals their behaviour would be158natural and could not cause the outrage and fear that ‘cannibalism’ has always provoked” (Hulme 14).In Colonial Encounters, Peter Hulme traces the process by which the term entering Europeanlanguages and consciousness as “cannibalism” instead of “anthropophagy” was transferred from therealm of supposition to that of fact in colonialist discourse and outlines the textual problems of itsinscription in Columbus’ Journal recording the voyage of 1492. He traces this trope in order todemonstrate how “the topic of land is dissimulated by the topic of savagery, this move beingcharacteristic of all narratives of the colonial encounter” (3). The text of Columbus’ original journal,now lost, survives only in the form of a hand-written abstract made by Bartolomé de las Casas inapproximately 1552, “probably from the copy of Columbus’ original then held in the monastery ofSan Pablo in Seville,” from which several transcripts have been made (Hulme 17). If the text wasnot problematic enough, the process is further complicated by the fact that Columbus’ own authorityis an Arawak Indian, a member of the group assumed to have been the traditional enemy of theCaribs (the people reported to have been cannibals), and whose language he has “at best, six weeks’practice in trying to understand” (Hulme 17).Hulme also records the “gradual displacement of the metonyms of oriental gold with thoseof savage gold” in Columbus’ account (33). Ostensibly looking for a northwest passage to Cathay(whose government refused to trade for any European products, accepting only gold), Columbuscarried a cargo not of gold but of trinkets. What (or where), then, was he really looking for?Although Columbus initially seemed to think of “cannibals” as “soldiers of the Khan” (as in GenghisKhan’3), during the course of the voyage he gradually comes to promise “the destruction of the‘people of Caniba’ without it now appearing worthy of mention that they might be the soldiers of acivilized potentate” (Hulme 33-4). Note that this decision is made on the basis of hearsay only:Columbus judges one group to be “man-eaters” on the basis of their physical appearance, especially159its cultural aspects (such as clothing, or lack thereof, and manner of hair-dressing’4),but providesno evidence “that these people are ‘caribes’ or ‘canibales’ other than [his own] unsupportedsupposition; there is no evidence at all that they eat men” (Hulme 41). The morphology of the word“cannibal,” then, has everything to do with the motivations governing Columbus’ journey through theCaribbean, the assumptions colouring his (and his readers’) interpretations of the peoples encountered,and “nothing at all to do with simple observation or record” (Hulme 34).W. Arens’ analysis complements the picture painted by Hulme. Arens points out that theclumsier “anthropophagist” was replaced by “cannibal” via Spanish mispronunciation of “Carib” (45).Hulme contends that this new descriptive termwas adopted into the bosom of the European family of languages with a speed andreadiness which suggests that there had always been an empty place kept warm forit. Poor ‘anthropophagy’, if not exactly orphaned, was sent out into the cold untilfinding belated lodging in the nineteenth century within new disciplines seekingauthority from the deployment of classical terminology. (19)As a representative or practitioner of one of those new nineteenth-century disciplines seekingscientific authority, anthropology, Arens documents various “case studies” of cannibalism to questionwhy anthropology has been less scientific and rigorous about cannibalism than it has been about otherless sensational aspects of human culture, and to reposition the field of inquiry: “the question ofwhether or not people eat each other is taken as interesting but moot. But if the idea that they do iscommonly accepted without adequate documentation, then the reason for this state of affairs is aneven more intriguing problem” (6). Accordingly, Arens questions “not why people eat human flesh,but why one group invariably assumes that others do” (139). He treats cannibalism as a discursiverather than as a gustatory practice, particularly given the fact that many famous cannibals, the Caribsand Arawaks of Columbus’ Caribbean for example, “who were supposed to make others disappearinto their cooking pots, have instead themselves vanished . . . . Although there may be some160legitimate reservations about who ate whom, there can be no question of who exterminated whom”in the contact between Europeans and so-called cannibal peoples (Arens 31).In the first account of his voyage to reach Spain, the Letter dated 15 February 1493 andaddressed to the nobleman Lord Raphael Sanchez, Columbus initially notes “[i]n these islands I havefound no human monstrosities, as many expected, but on the contrary the whole population is verywell formed •“ However, he goes on to say,[a]s I have found no monsters, so I have had no report of any except in an island‘Quaris’, the second at the coming into the Indies, which is inhabited by a people whoare regarded in all the islands as very fierce and who eat human flesh. They havemany canoes with which they range through all the islands of India and pillage andtake as much as they can. They are no more malformed than the others . . . . (14-6,my emphasis)It is as if, in the absence of actual monsters, the practice or even the idea of cannibalism signifies adefinitive monstrosity which clearly and irrevocably marks the distinction between the European selfand the native other who, the European has decided, has effectively removed himself from the realmand considerations of humanity by engaging in it. The practice may be textual or discursive, but ithas effects in the real world: Columbus does not have to go through the motions of signing treatiestransferring possession of the land with the natives, these “Caribes” or “Canibales” (as he would haveto do with the Grand Khan), because of their unnatural savagery, which deserves to be destroyed. Bythe end of the Letter, Columbus lists the profits and products to be gained by Isabella and Ferdinandas a result of this voyage, including “slaves, as many as they shall order to be shipped and who willbe from the idolators,” or cannibals (Columbus 16).While he never acknowledged that he did not in fact reach China, “his failure to return withthe spices and gold he had promised may have had something to do with Columbus’ veiled hintsabout the potential benefits to be had from slavery” (Arens 45). The inhumanity of Spanishcolonisation led to Arawak revolts, which in turn led both to violent responses and their justification:161“[r]esistance and cannibalism became synonymous and also legitimized the brutal Spanish reaction”(Arens 49). In addition, royal policy prohibited the enslavement of the inhabitants of Spanishcolonies (colonisation was, after all, officially intended for the islanders’ spiritual rather than Spain’seconomic benefit), “except in the case of ‘a certain people called Cannibals” (Arens 49-50). Thissituational definition had devastating consequences for the peoples so defined:Islands once thought to be inhabited by Arawak [the enemies of the Caribs orCannibals] upon closer inspection turned out in reality to be overrun by hostilecannibals. Slowly but surely greater areas were recognized as Carib and theirenslavement legalized . . . . Thus the operational definition of cannibalism in thesixteenth century was resistance to foreign invasion followed by being sold intoslavery, which was held to be a higher status than freedom under aboriginalconditions. (Arens 51)Both ethnic groups, the supposedly peaceful Arawaks as well as the supposedly ferocious cannibalisticCaribs, were victims of genocide as a result of being labelled cannibals on the basis of Europeansupposition.As Olive Dickason argues, in such situations eyewitness documentation of any practicedeemed savage by Europeans plays a less important role than European perceptions about both thepractice and its supposed practitioners. In France during the colonial period, for example,two themes of innocence and bestiality developed side by side, opposite aspects of thesame reality . . . . As the negative and positive views of Amerindians polarized andcrystallized, the one upholding their superior virtue became chiefly a literary andtheoretical position, while the one downgrading them became the guide for practicalpolitics. (Dickason 5 1-2)The noble, gentle savage is so defined according to European norms and needs; when those needs,particularly territorial desires, change, so does the operational definition of the savage. At the sametime, in seventeenth-century France, the very term “sauvage” did not-- could not -- carry therelatively neutral connotation ofsimply living in the woods. In that intensely religious age, the medieval habit ofviewing man in moral terms was still far too deeply implanted for such a neutral use162to have been anything but desultory, and highly individual. While shades of emphasiscould and did vary from writer to writer, the general implication was always clear: tobe savage meant to be living according to nature, in a manner ‘closer to that of wildanimals than to that of man.’ The beast far outweighed the innocent. (Dickason 63-4)The foundation of such perceptions, Dickason argues, is the basic assumption that “it was not somuch lack of reason or even retrogression that made [Amerindians] savages, but rather the fact thatthey were not like Europeans” (66).The definition of non-European peoples as cannibals, from the first contact between old worldand new recorded by Columbus, rests entirely on the basis of European perception of, or belief in,such gustatory practices. “As the Jesuits said of the Huron, beliefs, no matter how apparentlyridiculous, are hard to eradicate” (Dickason 84), even though none of the famous texts of cannibalismincludes actual eyewitness testimony. In fact, the absence of eyewitness evidence in many of thecommonly-cited anthropological cases is itself used as proof, in an astounding tautology: since thecivilising and colonising ventures of Europeans eradicate the inhuman practice, naturally it is neveractually witnessed.Such a ridiculous claim would be laughable were its consequences not so serious.In examining the pervasiveness of the notion of others as cannibals, the implicationthat this charge denies the accused of their humanity is immediately recognizable.Defining them in this way sweeps them outside the pale of culture and places themin a category with animals. ‘Those’ people, whether they inhabit the next valley oranother continent, lack culture because human beings do not eat each other. Eatinghuman flesh succinctly signals an individual or group as non-human in a basic way.(Arens 140)Almost any behaviour which would annihilate this inhuman practice-- or its practitioners -- isexcusable, “while more sophisticated forms of dominance, such as enslavement and colonization,become an actual responsibility of the culture bearers” (Arens 141) (the proverbial “white man’sburden”). Cannibalism becomes a mark of the savage, whose humanity is debatable; the question oftime is relevant here, since cannibalism may also be identified in the prehistory, or pre-Christian163history, of European peoples. Thus present-day cannibals may be representatives, as Arens puts it,“of us as we once were” (19).Even though accusations of cannibalism in Western European history (for example, Romanaccusations that early Christians “used blood in mysterious secret rites” [Arens 191) are summarilydismissed, similar statements made about non-European groups are treated quite seriously. Arens’attempt to debunk the myth of cannibalism as a prevalent cultural feature has been challenged byanthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday, who treats cannibalism as a physical act which has cultural andsymbolic meanings. However, Sanday does not discuss the Christian Mass -- in which the bread andwine of the Eucharist are transformed for the faithful into the body and blood of Christ, andconsumed as such -- as an example of a cannibal ritual, even metaphorically. Instead she developsher analysis of cannibalism through examples from non-European cultures only, arguably provingArens’ point by default.As in contemporary politics, however, so-called substance or reality is less important thanimage or representation. Tzvetan Todorov argues this point in The Conquest of America:an event may not have occurred, despite the allegations of one of the chroniclers. Butthe fact that the latter could have stated such an event, that he could have counted onits acceptance by the contemporary public, is at least as revealing as the simpleoccurrence of an event which proceeds, after all, from chance. In a way, the receptionof the statements is more revealing for the history of ideologies than their production:and when an author is mistaken, or lying, his text is no less significant than when heis speaking the truth; the important thing is that the text be ‘receivable’ bycontemporaries, or that it has been regarded as such by its producer. From this pointof view, the notion of ‘false’ is irrelevant . . . . (54)At the “boundary where ideological justification for inhumanity [by Europeans, via conquest,colonisation, slavery, and genocide] becomes more important than fact,” cannibalism functions as adiscursive practice with textual rather than cultural or behavioural origins (Arens 54). Thediscrepancy between European claims of cannibalism in indigenous peoples and the historical164consequences of contact, especially when history is written by the conquerors, allows me to treatcannibalism as a discourse which serves to justify colonial or imperial appropriation. So it is withinthis context, this understanding of cannibalism, that I turn to the various texts of Cook’s journals.A Digression, concerning TaboosAlthough Sanday does not appear to recognise the hole in her argument regarding theEucharist, the question of the nature of consumption of the Host involved in Communion issignificant in relation to cannibalism. What makes the two different? Anthropologicaldiscourse tends to treat cannibalism as a practice shrouded in mystery and governed by taboo,a particularly important concept in relation to the South Pacfic cultures encountered by Cook.However, the Christian Mass is arguably governed by as many taboos or mystical regulationsas any so-called primitive rite. For example, until the last decade or so there was a tabooagainst eating before taking Communion, and then one against chewing the wafer, based onthe fears of the early fathers that communicants’ taking such an active role in the process ofincorporation might arouse undesirable associations to less savoury religious practices. Theemphasis remains firmly on spiritual as opposed to physical nourishment. This taboo is linkedto another forbidding Roman Catholic communicants to use their hands to move the wafer totheir mouths. Instead, the priest, as a representative of God, neutralises the act by servingas the agent by which the Host is incorporated into the communicant’s body. In the Churchof England, by contrast, communicants themselves place the host in their mouths (using thefingers or raising cupped hands to mouth) -- perhaps as a form of rebellion against RomanCatholic strictures. Possibly these cultural variations on a shared ritual suggest some pointabout England’s imperial cannibalism relative to that of Catholic powers like France, Spain,and Portugal, although Cook (by all accounts not a particularly pious man, whose shipscarried no chaplain or priest) might not be the best example of English devotion abroad; the165social taboos determined by religion were more important to his voyages than formal Churchstrictures.The notion of taboo has longfunctioned as an organising principle in anthropologicaland historical accounts of Pacific cultures. Dening discusses its significance for Cook’s lastvoyage:In Hawaii, as elsewhere in Polynesia, the structural opposition ofNative and Stranger was played out in an annual cycle of rituals. Eightmonths of the year belonged to the Stranger Chiefs, and were the time ofhuman sacrifice and war, the time of kapu (taboo), and of those protocolsof the dominance of chiefly power. It was the time in which the chiefswalked on the land like sharks and the people of the land, thecommoners, obeyed all the kapu, bowed their heads to the ground,removed themselves from the way of the chiefs; they obeyed all the kapuor suffered death as kapu breakers. (‘Sharks 238-9)In November 1778, Cook’s ships arrived at Hawaii during the other season, “a reversed worldin which the chiefs ritually lost their power to the people, when and protocols were putaside, in which there were no sacrifices or wars, in which the god of the land, Lono, returnedto the islands” (Dening, “Sharks” 429). Pleasantly surprised by the uncommonly welcomingreception, and the “extraordinarily generous” offerings of the Hawaiians who insisted oncalling Cook Lono instead of the “usual versions” of his name (Tuti, Kuki), the English stayedat Hawaii for almost the whole of the makahiki season (four months beginning inOctober/November), leaving on 4 February, which was, “as far as computers can calculate,the last day of makahiki in that year” (Dening, “Sharks” 430, 433). However, theResolution’s sprung foremast forced the ships to return within ten days instead of thepromised year. Dening argues that Cook’s death resulted from this disruption of theHawaiian calendar: “All Cook’s gestures and threats, done in his eyes for the sake ofproprietyand discipline, were gestures out of season.”25 Returning during the time of war, humansacrifice, and Cook suffered the fate of /çj breaker: death.In Western society, human sacrifice is frequently linked to assumptions of166cannibalism, and beyond that as well to the breaking of other taboos. The anthropologicalnotion of taboo has become a metaphor for behaviour considered unacceptable by a society asa whole, with official condemnation of those deviant few who engage in it. The notion ofguarding a particular sacredness in Pacific cultures is transformed into a notion ofprohibition, ostracism, and boycott in European and North American metaphoric uses of theterm. As such it becomes a kind of shorthand to describe any practice deemed grosslyunacceptable (with the corresponding intimation that it verges on the primitive or savage):incest, situational cannibalism, or “that Unnatural Crime which ought never to be mentioned”(Samwell 1184).Cook the HerbivoreCook’s nutritional discoveries were as significant for naval history as his territorial ones: notone man died of scurvy on any of his three voyages. James Watt suggests that the nutritionaldiscoveries attributed to Cook properly belong to Dr. James Lind, and that “disaster was avoided [onCook’s voyages primarily] because they gathered fresh greens whenever they touched land” (40).Before the mid-eighteenth century, scurvy customarily took such a toll on naval crews that “it wascommon practice to doubly overstaff in preparation for the toll of this nutritional deficiency disease”(Burkhardt 13). In addition to provisioning the ships with a variety of antiscorbutics, Cookencouraged the crew to consume whatever greens they could gather on landing:it is astonishing How we have Come to so little Damage in this way during so Longa time for it was the Custom of our Crews to Eat almost Every Herb plant Root andkinds of Fruit they Could Possibly Light [upon] with[out] the Least Inquirey orHesitation or any Degree of skill & knowledge of their Qualitys, and as they havebeen so far Lucky as to Light upon Nothing Hurtfull I thing [sic] it is highly probablethis disposition has been the principle Means of preserving Our Healths for such aNumber of years Almost Constantly on the water. Captain Cook raised this spiritAmoungst us by his Example for scarc[e]ly any thing Came wrong to him that wasGreen and he was as Carefull in providing Vegitables for the Messess of the Crew as167for his own Table and I do Belive that in this Means Consisted his graund Art ofpreserving his people in Health During so Many of the Longest and Hardest Voyagesthat was Ever Made.It was his practise to Cause great Quantitys of Green Stuff to be BoiledAmoungst the pease Soup and wheat and Care’d Not Much wether they were Bitteror Sweet so as he was but Certain they had no Pernicious Quality and Frequently toone who Considered only the pleasing of their Taste without having Respect to healththe Messess were somewhat spoiled But as there was Nothing Else to be got theywere Obledged to Eat them and it was No Uncommon Thing when Swallowing Overthese Mess[es] to Curse him heartyly and wish for gods Sake that he Might beObledged to Eat such Damned Stuff Mixed with his Broth so Long as he Lived. Yetfor all that there were None so Ignorant as Not to know how Right a Thing it was.But the Generality of them for all that will please their Palate and run the Risque oftheir health if it is Not to be procured or preserved but by Eating Things that areBitter & disagreable.He would Frequently Order them on shore in partys to walk about the Countryand smell the Fresh Earth and Herbage and from His Example and Disposition theywere in a Manner Let to know that it was Expected they Woud theirStomach with any green stuff that Could [be go]t if it was even at the Risque ofgeting the grip[es] [w]alking About himself he was shure to be and as hewas Not Nice he Commonly Succeded and in time the Men adopted the same Humourand Disposition as by Infectsin and perhaps in Many it Might be with a Veiw ofmaking their Court to him, for they knew it was A great Recommendation to be seenComing on board from A pleasure jaunt with A Hankerchif full of greens. (Home1455-6)Although flesh from ship’s stores was consumed on all but the traditional Naval “banyen” (meatless)days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), both officers and crew supplemented their day’s allowancewith whatever fish or fowl they could catch, while Cook emphasised the consumption of vegetablesin his dietary experiments: sauerkraut and salted cabbage were served on Beef days (Tuesday andSaturday). In addition, the ships carried carrot marmalade and “Saloupe and Rob of Lemons andOranges” for the prevention and treatment of scurvy (Burkhardt 26). So-called “portable soup,” madefrom cakes of beef broth, was served on banyen days with wheat or oatmeal for breakfast, with driedpease for dinner, and with whatever fresh vegetables could be obtained at landing-places. As Cooknoted in the paper he presented to the Royal Society in 1776, portable soup “enabled us to makeseveral nourishing and wholesome messes, and was the means of making the people eat a greater168quantity of greens than they would have done otherwise” (Cook, “Method” 405).These dietary experiments were part of the scientific discovery of the voyages: in 1776, theRoyal Society of London awarded Cook the Copley Gold Medal for his paper on these measures(Burkhardt 39). More interesting to me, however, is the high irony in the contrast between Cook’sdesire that the crew should eat as many vegetables as possible and the assumption of cannibalism innon-European peoples. (Indeed, there is a further ironic connection in that the party of Furneaux’smen assumed to have been cannibalised at Grass Cove on the second voyage went there to gather notonly grass for the ship’s animals but also vegetables for the crew, particularly “Cellery” [Burney751]). This contrast is also crucial in relation to European conceptions of the sexuality of foods,particularly leafy green and root vegetables, and assumptions regarding the sexuality of native peoplesin the Pacific.The lengthy quotation about Cook’s endorsement of vegetables, and his Royal Society paper,indicates that although the captain encouraged the men to eat “almost every Herb plant Root andkinds of Fruit they could possibly light” upon, greens are mentioned more frequently than other kindsof vegetables. Indeed, the one vegetable carried in the ships’ stores was a green one, at least in itsoriginal state: cabbage, both salted and pickled as sauerkraut. While root vegetables may seem moreobviously sexual because of phallic shapes or supposed aphrodisiac qualities (as with the mandrakeof Donne’s “Song,” 1633), there is a long-standing European tradition regarding the effects of leafygreen vegetables on human sexuality. “Lettuse,’ as Andrew Boorde put it in 1542, ‘doth extyncteveneryous [i.e., sexual] actes” (qtd. in Visser 231). In addition to this assumption of the soporificqualities of lettuce, the system of humoral medicine classified it as an anaphrodisiac, largely becauselettuce is ninety to ninety-five percent water and therefore “cold” (Visser 243). As such, lettuce issuitable fare for those who have sicknesses resulting from excessive heat andlor dryness, as well as169for those who wish to dampen sexual desire. Margaret Visser notes that by the end of theseventeenth century, lettuce was well-established as a salad vegetable in England: in his A Discourseof Sallets, John Evelyn wrote, “by reason of its soporiferous quality, lettuce ever was, and stillcontinues the principal foundation of the universal tribe of sallets, which is to cool and refresh,besides its other properties” contributing to morality, temperance, and chastity (243).So in addition to nutritional reasons (the prevention of scurvy), moral and ideological ones(claiming that lettuce-like leafy greens cooled the passions) encouraged the consumption of greenvegetables whenever possible on Cook’s Pacific voyages. By the second and third voyages,lamenting the changes in Pacific cultures -- particularly what he considered the worsening anddegraded morals of Polynesian women -- Cook has an extra incentive to encourage his crew andofficers to supplement their standard fare with greens. A crewman consuming his “Hankerchif fullof greens” at dinner might be less tempted to further erode the sexual mores of Pacific cultures afterdinner, not to mention that shore leave could be spent more profitably in collecting those leavesadvantageous to health (and possibly science, given the botanical interests of the voyages) than inengaging in sexual relations which might adversely affect it, by catching and/or spreading venerealdiseases.The contrast between Cook the herbivore and the supposed cannibal cultures of the Pacificconstructs a simple division between “us” and “them.” “We” Europeans -- including the readers ofthe published text of the journals, encouraged to identify with the whole grand adventure -- aremoderate in our appetites, our diets governed by considerations of health and nutrition; the idea ofconsuming human flesh is repugnant to us. No mention is made of our unnatural or depraved sexualappetites; indeed, the Captain’s tone in discussing the sexual conduct of his crew on shore leave isthat of a father sorrowful and somewhat dismayed at the need of his sons to sow their wild oats,170while he takes what means he can to encourage continence. “They” -- the peoples of the Pacific --on the other hand are governed by insatiable appetites in all matters of the flesh. Their sexualappetites shock us in their lack of cleanliness and chastity, and much of their diet is unpleasant if notactually disgusting.16 Nothing, in fact, could more clearly highlight the contrast between “us” and“them” than the contrast between the cooling, healthful greens gathered on a shore jaunt tosupplement the diet planned by a scientist lauded for his nutritional advances, eaten by “our men” inthe Pacific, and the image of the steaming, bloody carcase of the victim of a cannibal feast.A Digression, concerning Animal ProteinIn The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory, Carol I.Adams examines the interconnections between patriarchy and meat-eating -- both socially-sanctioned systems in which one life-form benefits materially and objectively from theoppression and domination of others. She questions the generally accepted split betweenhumans and animals, and the shift -- in language -- which neutralises the death of an animalto produce the animal protein humans consume as “meat.” Although she does not discusscannibalism at length, Adams does draw attention to the somewhat bizarre distinctions meat-eating cultures make: cannibals are humans who eat the flesh of other humans, which is anunthinkable atrocity, while humans who eat the flesh of other animals merely follow (quitesensibly and properly) the dictates of nature, reason, and their bodily need for protein.The politics ofmeat, Adams argues, are sexual: she cites anthropological studies whichdemonstrate that “women’s status is inversely related to the importance of meat in nontechnological societies” (35). When meat is scarce it is women and children, particularlygirl children, who go without -- even in situations such as pregnancy or lactation, when awoman’s nutritional needs are in fact greater than those of a man. In meat-eating cultures,171meat and masculinity are equated, and sometimes even conflated: meat is a necessaryindicator, guarantor, and privilege of masculinity.It has traditionally been felt that the working man needs meat forstrength. A superstitious analogy to homeopathic principles operates inthis belief: in eating the muscle of strong animals we will become strong.According to the mythology of patriarchal culture, meat promotesstrength.. . . The literal evocation of male power is found in the conceptof meat. (Adams, SPM 30)Television ads aired in 1993-4 by Canadian beef producers depend upon this associationbetween meat and power: they feature Canadian Olympic medallists (for example, swimmerMark Tewkesbury and figure skaters Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler) satisfying their post-workout hunger with a meal including beef The traditional equation of meat-eating andphysical strength has been extended to include women in these ads, as shots ofBrasseurflyingthrough the air and landing confidently indicate. Such an inclusion may strengthen the meat-eating message by simultaneously playing on the traditional frmale role of meal-planner andproducer, suggesting that including beef in the diet is a wise choice, both economically andnutritionally. Significantly, when these Olympians are asked if vegetables alone will sufficeafter a workout, the answer is a definite negative; but the meal suggestion (for example, beeffajitas) includes only a few thin strips of beef supplementing a plate of mostly vegetables.Evidently, a little bit of beef transforms a meal from the mundane to the exciting, and intoone which replaces those essential nutrients burned off during strenuous physical exertion.The word “meat,” like the word “man,” is both generic -- referring to all foodstuffsand all humans -- and specific; the word “vegetables,” like the word “woman,” is always onlyspecific. Vegetables are associated with femininity and weakness. Perhaps this associationcaused the reluctance of Cook’s crew to eat the greens he encouraged; they preferred thetraditional, masculine fare of suet (if there was no meat), feeling so deprived of this necessitythat they licked the grease from the ships’ riggings. The sexual politics of the voyage becomemore and more problematic. While native men are ftminised, the association of their cannibal172feasts with a kind of ultimate masculinity (understood by tropes of animal strength andprimitive virility as much as by those of disembodied reason and cool logic) enacts anutritional one-upmanship: “where’s the beef?”Cook at Nootka SoundThe official edition of Cook’s third voyage was edited by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury,commissioned by the Lords of the Admiralty, and published in 1784. Comparing specific passagesfrom Douglas’ edition with comparable moments in Beaglehole’s scholarly edition reveals thedifference between what I have called the tropes produced by Cook and the tropes of Cook producedby others. The first suggestion of Nootkan cannibalism in Douglas’ edition reads as follows:The articles which they offered to sale were skins . . . ,weapons. .. ; fish-hooks, andinstruments of various kinds; wooden vizors of many different monstrous figures; asort of woollen stuff, or blanketing; bags filled with red ochre; peices of carved work;beads; and several other little ornaments of thin brass and iron, shaped like a horseshoe, which they hang at their noses; and several chissels, or peices [sic] of iron, fixedto handles. From their possessing which metals, we could infer that they had eitherbeen visited before by some civilized nation, or had connections with other tribes ontheir continent, who had communication with them. But the most extraordinary of allthe articles which they brought to the ships for sale, were human skulls, and handsnot quite stripped of the flesh, which they made our people plainly understand theyhad eaten; and, indeed, some of them had evident marks that they had been upon thefire. We had but too much reason to suspect, from this circumstance, that the horridpractice of feeding on their enemies is as prevalent here, as we had found it to be atNew Zealand and other South Sea islands. For various articles which they brought,they took in exchange knives, chissels, peices of iron and tin nails, looking glasses,buttons, or any kind of metal. Glass beads they were not fond of and cloth of everysort they rejected. (Douglas II, 270-1, my emphasis)Beaglehole’ s scholarly edition of 1967, however, records this moment in Cook’s journal in a ratherless sensational way:Their articles [for trade] were the Skins of various animals . . . , Weapons. . . , piecesof carved work and even human skuls and hands, and a variety of little articles tootedious to mention. For these they took in exchange, Knives, chissels, pieces of iron& Tin, Nails, Buttons, or any kind of metal. Beads they were not fond of and cloth173of all kinds they rejected. (Beaglehole 111:1, 296-7)There are a number of interesting discrepancies between these two passages. One is that Beaglehole’ sversion-- based on Cook’s logs and journals only -- is much shorter, primarily because Douglas listswhat Beaglehole records as “a variety of little articles too tedious to mention.” Another glaringdiscrepancy between the two texts is that although Cook does not ascribe cannibalism to the Nootka,Douglas (a ghostwriter whose name does not appear on the title page) does, using Cook’s authorityto record Nootkan practices as evidence of cannibalism among them.Of course, first-person narration is another trope of the exploration and discovery genre whichDouglas exploits to establish the truth-claim of eyewitness testimony when in fact he alters -- or edits-- the text quite radically. Douglas’ use of such rhetorical devices as litotes, a form of understatementin which something is said by denying its opposite, gives the hardworking (and working-class)navigator (son of a day-labourer) the air of a gentleman on the Grand Tour.18 For example, Cook’sdescription of the manner of preserving fish at Nootka Sound, and the result, appears in Beagleholethus:They hang them on small rods at first about a foot from the fire, afterwards theyremove them higher and higher to make room for others till they get to the roof ofthe house; when dryed they are made up into bales and covered with Mats; thus theyare kept till wanting and eat very well, but there is but little meat upon them. In thesame manner they cure Cod and other large fish, and some are cured in the airwithout fire. (Beaglehole, 111:1, 303-4, my emphasis)In Douglas’ edition the same passage is virtually identical, except for one phrase:They hang them on small rods, at first about a foot from the fire; afterward theyremove them higher and higher, to make room for others, till the rods, on which thefish hang, reach the top of the house. When they are completely dried, they are takendown and packed close in bales, which they cover with mats. Thus they are kept tillwanted; and they are not a disagreeable article offood. Cod, and other large fish, arealso cured in the same manner by them; though they sometimes dry those in the openair, without fire. (Douglas II, 280, my emphasis)Fish which for Cook “eat very well, but there is but little meat upon them” are transformed by174Douglas into “not a disagreeable article of food.” A Captain’s prosaic concern with provisioning hiscrew as efficiently (and in Cook’s case as healthfully) as possible is recast as a mini-meditation onthe pleasures of the table. In Douglas’ edition of the journal, litotes establishes the qualities ofgentility and discernment deemed essential in a Cook who was carefully being constructed, in JamesA. Williamson’s phrase, as “the representative not only of England but of civilization” (qtd in Abbott139). The plain-speaking Cook of the logbooks and journals is elevated by the rhetoric into animperial hero.Western humanism’s traditional assumption that a written language is the external marker ofcivilisation is worth mentioning in the context of the journal’s use of rhetoric. The rhetorical figuresthat Douglas puts in Cook’s mouth highlight the hierarchical nature of Cook’s relationship with these(or any other) Natives. The contrast between the monuments of western civilisation, personified byCook, and the dumbshow of primitive culture -- unintelligible and (or perhaps because) illegible --demonstrates European superiority to a European audience. Douglas’ editing ensures and establishesthe distance between a Native “them” and a European “us.”Douglas’ edition of the journal -- a composite text which borrowed liberally from the accountsof the other officers without necessarily acknowledging them -- presents a Cook who ascribescannibalism to the Nootka. Beaglehole’s scholarly edition -- which adds pertinent information fromthe other officers’ journals in the form of footnotes -- presents a Cook who does not. Thisdiscrepancy indicates at least the possibility that cannibalism operates as a discourse rather than asan observed behaviour within the encounter. The discourse of cannibalism is also at work inBeaglehole’ s edition, however, when he discusses the issue in a footnote, despite the fact that Cookmentions neither the word nor the practice. Significantly, this footnote takes up more space on thepage than the passage it ostensibly annotates. Beaglehole splices one comment by Cook (not on175cannibalism) together with some comments on cannibalism from the other officers’ journals; thewords of the other officers occupy a great deal more space in the footnote than do Cook’s. As if thiswere not enough, the footnote ends with commentary from twentieth-century historians andanthropologists on the issue of Nootkan cannibalism. My point here is that Beaglehole’s scholarlyedition, by giving the footnoted discussion more space than Cook’s text, which does not even mentionthe practice, reinscribes cannibalism as a matter worthy of scholarly consideration.A Digression, concerning CornplicitvOf course, my own treatment bears scrutiny here: how is my project different fromBeaglehole’s if merely mentioning or discussing the issue ofcannibalism reinscribes it? Whati have outlined in Beaglehole’s textual footnote reaffirms what i have called (in the previouschapter) “the information or knowledge about Nootka Sound loffered as] an imperial historyof consciousness. . . , a history of. . . refication” through the scholarly apparatus of the text.And i conclude that my project -- which interrogates, critiques, argues -- is different fromBeaglehole’s; i do not attempt (or desire) to achieve the sense of scholarly “objectivity” whichpervades his work (“just the facts, ma’am”). True, the weight of the editor’s consideredopinion is frequently obvious, but the overwhelming impression is that Beaglehole presents theinformation, leaving Cook’s tremendous accomplishments to speak for themselves. The editorconstructed by the text is neither a proud parent nor an adoring acolyte anxious to show offon his prodigy’s behalf but a reasonable, dispassionate assessor of evidence.More than our methodologies and presentations are different; Beaglehole and i reachrather different conclusions, i think. My analysis of supposed Nootkan cannibalism focussesnot on its cultural significance for the Nootka, but instead on its cultural significance for theEnglish crew and a European audience all too ready to believe in it. I treat cannibalism as176a discourse instead of a cultural practice to be proved or disproved (although i think myopinion that cannibals are like 1JFOs -- many reported sightings, i remain unconvinced -- hasbeen clearly presented). Beaglehole’s text, i regret to say, somehow still gives the impression(a taste or flavour perhaps) of the likelihood of Nootkan cannibalism, as if the scholarlyapparatus of the footnote provides the information actually missing from Cook’s account.Again, the real issues at stake are critical assumptions, scholarly methodology, and ultimatelycultural constructions. Douglas as editor gives the impression that Cook claimed the Nootkawere cannibals; Beaglehole as editor reveals that Cook did not in fact make this claim, butBeaglehole’s edition, through the footnote, still somehow seems to make it for him. As critic,my project is to point to the construction of this mythology and to trace its creation,dissemination, and reification, offering -- instead of yet another construction of Cook -- aconstruction of constructions, about constructions. Am i different from Beaglehole? Yes andno. I am, no less than he is, a product of my environment and education. Do i want todestroy his life-work, trashing him in the process? No, but i do want to show this work thesame respect he accords the records of Cook’s voyages by trying to make sense of the wholein what is admittedly a radically different social and intellectual milieu.Beaglehole’ s footnote represents in miniature the development of the ‘story’ of Nootkancannibalism. Although this story has been attributed to Cook, Beaglehole’s edition of the text of thejournal reveals that Cook was not in fact the source. In effect, Douglas has put words from theaccounts of the other officers into Cook’s mouth, as the footnote reveals by citing sources:‘One man offered to barter a child of about five or six years of age for a spike-nail;I am satisfied we did not mistake his intention.’ --Log, 1 April. ‘We bought 3 or 4Human hands which they brought to sell, they appeared to have been lately cut offas the flesh was not reduced to an horny substance but raw--they made signs that theywere good eating, & seemed to sell them to us for that purpose or at least all of usunderstood them in that light. They likewise brought on board two or three Human177Skuls & offered them to sale--our Surgeon bought one of them.’ --Bayly JT, 30March. Edgar was more careful in examining these suspected cannibals. At first therewas ‘all the reason in the World to think they were so. But it was evident we did notunderstand them or that they did not understand us, for I had this morning a mostConvincing Proff of the falsity of our notions.’ He bought a hand from one man ‘andthen desir’d him to Eat it, which he would not do, I then offered him more Iron &Brass than wou’d have purchas’d one of their most Elegant dresses, if he would eatpart of it, all which offers he treated with Great Contempt & departed in Great anger.Yet there are several Gentlemen in the two Ships, who still continue prepossessed oftheir former opinion.’ --Edgar, 25 April. (Beaglehole 111:1, 297)Bayly’s description demonstrates how a partial account-- based on assumption, expectation, and(wilful?) misinterpretation -- may become the whole truth; even his admission of the possibility ofmisunderstanding (“or at least all of us understood them in that light”) strengthens his claim tocredibility, since he has apparently considered that he might be mistaken in his reading of theevidence. By contrast, Edgar’s experiment disproving Nootkan cannibalism is ignored by “severalGentlemen in the two Ships, who still continue prepossessed of their former opinion,” and by Douglasalso. The idea, the expectation, and the assumption of cannibalism among the savages is so deeplyentrenched that physical evidence to the contrary (both the absence of eyewitnessed cannibal feastsand Edgar’s experiment revealing Nootkan disgust at the idea to equal European horror) challengingthat assumption is invisible, edited out. And indeed, the one comment by Cook suggesting asimilarity between the Nootka and Europeans -- participation in a slave economy-- is glossed overor buried under a discussion about a supposed cultural difference, the literal cannibalism of theNootka in contrast to the metaphoric cannibalism of English colonialism (suggested by Swift’s ModestProposal earlier in the century).The process which Hulme calls “historical alibi, in which a story of origins is told,” true onlyin the sense that it is not false, is clearly evident in the accounts of the month at Nootka Sound(Hulme 15). For example, the account of the American marine corporal John Ledyard, independentlypublished in the United States in 1783, makes the most explicit claim for cannibalism -- not only178among the Nootka. Ledyard devotes almost half his description of Nootka Sound to an attemptedexplication of the origins of the practice of cannibalism, complete with Biblical precedent.The circumstance of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac to which he was injoinedby the Deity, though he absolutely did not do it, yet was sufficient to introduce theidea that such a sacrifice was the most pleasing to God, and as it was an event veryremarkable it probably became an historical subject, and went about among othertribes, and was handed down among them by tradition, and liable to all the changesincident thereto, and in time the story might have been that Abraham not only offeredbut really did sacrifice his own son. (74)Not only is his account riddled with probability and might-have-beens, it also accepts unquestioninglythat Judeo-Christian myths of origin can explain the “savage” practices of people who have beendescribed as probably having never seen Christians before, and establishes -- once again -- thesuperiority of Europeans who know “absolutely” that Abraham did not in fact kill Isaac, but was ableto make a sacrifice more pleasing to Jehovah at the last minute. The paratactic structure of Ledyard’ sexplanation -- one very long sentence of ninety-six words-- betrays a kind of hysteria in the hyperaccumulation of phrases beginning with “and” as well as its own tentativeness in the inability of suchstructures to demonstrate or enact causality. However, Ledyard alone records that many of the crewpartook of a cannibal feast, “a human arm roasted”: “I have heard it remarked,” he writes, “thathuman flesh is the most delicious, and therefore tasted a bit, and so did many others withoutswallowing the meat or the juices, but either my conscience or my taste rendered it very odious tome” (73). Apparently, not finding the meat “delicious” is enough to disqualify the Europeans fromthe ranks of the cannibal savages.Ledyard takes what he reads as the appearance of cannibal practices as proof positive --although, as Archer puts it, his account “proved absolutely nothing about the Nootka and identifiedonly one known cannibal -- Ledyard himself!” (463). Other officers, a little more critically mindedor perhaps not counting on revenues from book sales, refused to judge on the scanty evidence179presented. King writes, “as we cannot be said to converse with the people, we can only judge fromoutward actions, & not knowing all the Causes that give rise to them, we must be constantly led intoerror” (1406). Similarly, Samwell records “we were led to think that these People are Cannibals,however of this we had no certain proof’ (1092). But most of the journals of Cook’s subordinateswere not published until recently, many of them in Beaglehole’ s 2-volume scholarly edition of thethird voyage. (Cook’s death in Hawaii made establishing an authoritative text more difficult;Beaglehole presents extracts from the other officers’ accounts to give readers and scholars ascomplete a text as possible, as well as a more multi-dimensional sense of the voyage.)In the same year that the official edition of Cook’s journal was published, another appeared,claiming to be “a copious, comprehensive, and satisfactory Abridgement” published by JohnStockdale, Scatcherd and Whitaker, John Fielding, and John Hardy. If Douglas implied that theNootka were cannibals, this later 1784 edition presents Nootkan cannibalism as a fact. At a point inhis edition which corresponds (roughly) to parallel observations from Cook’s journal in Douglas andBeaglehole’ s editions, Stockdale’ s Cook states:Among all the articles, however, which they exposed to sale, the most extraordinarywere human skulls, and hands, with some of the flesh remaining on them, which theyacknowledged they had been feeding on; and some of them, indeed, bore evidentmarks of having been upon the fire. From this circumstance, it was but too apparent,that the horrid practice of devouring their enemies, is practised here, as much as atNew-Zealand, and other South-sea islands. (Stockdale II, 211, my emphasis)No longer is cannibalism merely suspected, as in Douglas’ edition: Stockdale’s edition declares thatthe Nootka are so depraved as to acknowledge readily that they devour their enemies (in contrast toDouglas’ relatively neutral “feeding on”). In this later 1784 edition, even Douglas’ innocent-soundingchapter heading, “Articles brought to barter” (Douglas II, 269) is made much more sinister andincriminating: “Variety of Articles brought to Barter, particularly human skulls” (Stockdale II, 209).By the end of 1784, the savages of the Pacific are served up for European consumption as cannibals180one and all.Douglas’ phrase “we had but too much reason to suspect that the horrid practice of feedingon their enemies, is as prevalent here, as we had found it to be at New Zealand” acquired the statusof historical truth in less than one year. Beaglehole’s footnoted discussion of cannibalism makesclear, by its inclusion of twentieth-century scholarly comment on the subject, that Nootkancannibalism is not a dead issue (as does my treatment of it here). However, it was not inevitable thatEuropeans identify cannibalism as a Nootkan practice. Archer notes that the Spaniards who firstmade contact with coastal societies in 1774, and who “traditionally employed ethnological researchand data collection for the end of eventual religious conversion,” make no mention of cannibalismuntil after reading Cook’s published journal, which “became the authoritative handbook for all whowould navigate in the North Pacific and contact the Northwest Coast inhabitants” (Archer 461, 462).Whether or not the Nootka actually were cannibals is immaterial (to scholars, if not to the peoplewhose realities have been shaped by the charge’9). Douglas recorded the suspicion of Nootkancannibalism in his edition of Cook’s Journal in such a manner as to inscribe both doubt and certainty,invoking all the authority of expertise gained by Cook in two previous voyages around the worldamong people for whom, Douglas says, the “horrid practice. . . is prevalent.” Douglas gave the labelto the peoples of the northwest coast, and it stuck.So What? Reading and CannibalismCannibalism as a discourse is read (by Europeans) as if between the lines of everydaybehaviour manifested in trade relations or religious practice; it provides a key which unlocks themysteries of the new world sign system. In a new collection of essays, Literature and the Body,which presents several critical attempts to “learn how to read ‘the body,” Stephen Slemon asks “why181is it that the cannibal figure is almost never fully present in colonialist representations?” (164).Although the cannibal encounter is the defining feature of colonial discourse, it is an encounter “bothparadigmatic and deferred” -- that is, to repeat Arens’ point, never actually witnessed but almostalways assumed, on the basis of conspicuously doctored if not exceedingly suspect evidence. Ifcannibalism is a textual and discursive rather than a gustatory practice (all image, no substance, orthe representation of a non-event), perhaps the cannibal moment really is textual in the most basicsense, occurring in the act of reading. In other words, (European) readers are the true man-eaters,consuming the representation of non-Europeans as cannibals in colonialist texts and imagining thatthe true substance of the lives of savage peoples in far-off lands is being incorporated into Europeanknowledge.Bill Livant’s examination of “The Imperial Cannibal” begins with exactly this premise, thatcannibals are to be found at the imperial centre rather than at its margins: “the empire is a consumerof lives and much else besides. It is only when we listen to those being eaten, eaten alive, that theessence of the empire is revealed: consumption. The empire is something that eats. It does not feedus, it feeds on us, feeds off us” (27). He develops his argument by examining Swift’s ModestProposal (1729), a text in which an fish poverty class -- a drain on the Commonwealth -- will betransformed from consumers to consumed by means of the modest proposal. Just as their parentshave been devoured by the English conquest and the corresponding appropriation of lands and“material conditions necessary for them to produce their existence,” Irish babies should be acceptableas commodities and foodstuffs for English landlords (Livant 29). Irony moves into social andpolitical commentary in the narrator’s description of the landlords as those who, “as they have alreadydevoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children” (Swift, Modest Proposal441). The ironic brilliance of the proposal lies in the fact that the landlords’ appetite for consuming182is as renewable, as endless, a resource as are babies20: “the appetite fordevouring...accumulating.. .the conditions of existence. ..is insatiable. For it is an appetite of this samegroup of people constituted as an imperial class. It is a class appetite -- an appetite not for personalconsumption but for class consumption” (Livant 30). The proposal depicting the imperial relationshipas one of cannibalism means that this appetite is for national, imperial, as well as personal and class,consumption. The metaphor extends beyond England and Ireland (England’s only remaining colony)to characterise the empire as a voracious appetite; the object of consumption is ultimately not anobject but the process of consumption itself, the process of eating, of incorporation, where (notmeaning but) satisfaction is endlessly deferred.This process of imperial cannibalism begins with representation, with reading. As MaggieKilgour argues in From Communion to Cannibalism,From Plato’s Symposium on, feasting and speaking have gone together, and there isa long tradition of seeing literature as food .Reading is therefore eating, an act of consumption. But in part this is simplybecause it belongs to a tradition which, as Genesis most dramatically represents, seesknowledge as the food with which we feed our egos. Not only do we, like Saint John,devour books, but we also swallow food for thought, then ruminate or chew it overuntil it is well digested. For homo sapiens, to think is to taste, as in the act ofknowledge we imagine that we draw the outer world into our minds and possess it.All our senses make contact with the world outside of ourselves. We ‘take things in’with our eyes and absorb sounds through our ears; both seeing and hearing aretherefore considered to be more refined versions of taste. However, as a model forknowing, taste is not only the most basic and bodily way of making contact with theworld outside of the individual but also the most intimate and intense way, resultingin a strict identity between eater and eaten. (8-9)Just as the products from the reaches of empire converge upon and enrich the imperial centre,the discourse of cannibalism assists in the taxonomic regulation of cultural differencethrough a politics of control, splitting the field of human relations through space andby time, enabling the self/other tropics of European modernity to inhabit thecomforting binary opposition of civilization versus savagery. Neither of these twospheres needs to be monolithic. If Europe can articulate a managed difference in thefield of ‘nature’, it can also countenance a potentially disruptive ‘savagery’ at homeand thus explain away its most egregious violations. (Slemon 165)183Cannibalism, at the centre of the European travelogue according to Michel de Certeau in his readingof Montaigne’s “Of the Cannibals,” “functions primarily for Europe in the material production ofwords: ‘the discourse that sets off in search of the other with the impossible task of saying the truthreturns from afar with the authority to speak in the name of the other and command belief” (Slemon166). As a discourse, it “enables mobility for the imperial subject and permits the political productionof meaning. De Certeau thus calls cannibalism ‘an economy of speech, in which the body is theprice” (Slemon 166). It establishes the authority of colonialist texts which purport to give voice tothe hitherto silent bodies of people soon to become colonialist subjects -- and whose territories,products, crafts, and cultures are soon to be devoured by European empires and readers.Cannibalism certainly seems to be at the ideological centre of the colonialist text. As apractice it is frequently mentioned, then endlessly analysed and theorised. For example, WilliamWales treats an incident of supposed cannibalism (of Furneaux’ s men) in New Zealand on the secondvoyage (23 November 1773) as an exercise in logic, deducing a number of corollaries which follow,and concluding:their practice of this horrid Action is from Choice, and the liking which they have forthis kind of Food; and this was but too visibly shewn in their eagerness for, and thesatisfaction which they testified in eating, those inconsiderable scrapts of the worstpart on board the Ship.. . . (Wales 819)Typically, Wales devotes more space to his theory of Maori cannibalism developed in response tothe incident than he does to its description. Perhaps this is not surprising, if, as Slemon suggests,cannibalism amounts to the “darkness’s ultimate deferral” (163). The paradox remains: Wales’ briefdescription of “the satisfaction which they testified in eating” is less representative of colonialistdepictions of cannibalism than Burney’s account of the scene of the presumed massacre andcannibalism at Grass Cove a few days later.• on the beach were 2 bundles of Cellery which had been gather’ d for loading the184Cutter -- a plain proof that the attack was made here-- a broken piece of an Oar wasstuck upright in the Ground to which they had tied their Canoes -- I then searchd allalong at the back of the beach to see if the Cutter was there -- we found no boat --but instead of her-- Such a shocking scene of Carnage & Barbarity as can never bementioned or thought of but with horror -- whilst we remained almost stupefied onthis spot Mr Fannin call’d to us. . . . (Burney 751, my emphasis)“Such a shocking scene of Carnage & Barbarity as can never be mentioned or thought of’-- or,apparently, conveyed in words -- “but with horror”: Burney is “stupefied” and his narrative ismomentarily frozen in its tracks as he tries to take in the unimaginable scene before him. Did I sayunimaginable? For surely European readers were (and are) only too ready to supply the imaginationto furnish the scene, aided by any number of artists’ renditions and engravings. (See figures 3.2, 3.3,3.4, and 3.5 for popular European representations of the matter-of-factness of new-world cannibalismthat the title of the Huxley engraving -- The Human Butcher Shop -- reveals; by contrast, figure 3.6depicts both what Europeans thought of as new world peoples’ savagery and native impressions ofthe nature and extent of European greed.)Here the sexual subtheme running through this chapter again becomes explicit, another wayof distinguishing between ‘noble’ and ‘bloodthirsty’ savages, played out in the vexing philosophicalarenas of nakedness and diet. Does the nakedness of aboriginal peoples signify the absence of shame,an Edenic purity, or lascivious immodesty? Is the new world a Paradise where fruits fall off the treeand vegetables await cultivation, or a wilderness peopled by the descendants of Shem and Ham,characterised by the consumption of foodstuffs, such as insects, forbidden by the Old Testament asunclean? I’ve reduced these extremely complex issues to binary oppositions to suggest thepolarisation of European perspectives on them as revealed in colonialist texts, including Cook’sJournal. However, they do manage to co-exist, or more correctly they necessarily co-exist, and areplayed off against each other for reasons advancing the interests and power of Europeans.The first English fur-trading vessel arrived at Nootka Sound one year after Cook’s official1jCD tO‘-1 0 CD-CD C-) CDWcLL)onsoCCDo—1C) 0tc C CD 0 C) C,)CDGoti—op0 CDCDC)0 ••o-nCD.0s2J*.,.00 I-flc1—.C,,;—;:‘> only as the discoverer of Australia and New Zealand. In contrast, Norah Story’s entryon Cook in her Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature mentions only those portionsof his career spent exploring what is now Canada, leaving out his South Pacific explorations entirely(188).7. The general context of imperialism is signified here by the feminised version of Columbus’name, the counterpart of “America” as the feminised name of Amerigo Vespucci given to thecontinent. It may also mark England’s claim to possession of the territory over that of the UnitedStates: British Columbia against the American District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.8. This is the “staples theory” first articulated by Harold Innis.9. See G.P.V. Akrigg and Helen B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle 1778-1 846 for theirchronicle of seasonal trading between English and Nootka, particularly at Nootka Sound, after Cook;for a historical perspective with less adulatory overtones, see George Woodcock, British Columbia:A History of the Province.251BIBLIOGRAPHYPrimary Sources: The Texts of Cook’s Third VoyageIn this dissertation I have used two sets of Cook’s journals primarily. The first of these isthe official edition published in three volumes in 1784, cited throughout as Douglas I, II, or III.The second set of Cook’s journals used extensively is Beaglehole’s set of scholarly editions forthe Hakluyt Society, one volume per voyage. They are similarly cited as Beaglehole I, II, or III.The text of the latter comes in two parts: Beaglehole 111:1 refers to Part 1, which consists of theofficial journal written by Cook, then Clerke, and finally King; Beaglehole 111:2 refers to Part 2,which consists of the journals of William Anderson and David Samwell and extracts from theother officers’ journals, to supplement the official account. In Chapter Three’s discussion of thetextual construction of cannibalism, I cite one other edition of Cook’s journals, an abridgement ofthe third voyage published by John Stockdale et a! in 1784, cited as Stockdale. The completelistings for all these editions are to be found under the editors’ names in the following list ofWorks Cited, although partial references to these editions are also made under James Cook.The Postscript, on the textual history of the third voyage, lists a number of other editionsof the text. I have listed only those editions which I mentioned specifically, deeming itunnecessary to duplicate Beddie’ s excellent Bibliography (included below): readers who want thecomplete textual history of Cook’s Voyages should consult.Anderson, William. A Journal of a Voyage made in his Majeslys Sloop Resolution May] 6th 1776Wm Anderson 30 May 1776-2 September 1777.Bayly, William. Astronomical Observations. London, 1782 (CIHM 17414).Beaglehole, J.C. The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776-1780. 2 parts. Vol. 3 of TheJournals of James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery. 4 vols. Hakluyt Society ExtraSeries 36. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1967.Beddie, M.K. Bibliography of Captain James Cook, R.N., F.R.S., Circumnavigator. 2nd ed.Sydney: Mitchell Library, 1970.Burney, James. ‘Burney’s Log.’ Beaglehole II, 746-52.Journal of the Proceedings of His Majys. Sloop, the Discovery, Chas. Clerke, Commander, incompany with the Resolution, Captn. Jas. Cook, Jas. Burney, Latona. Ts. of 4 vol. ms. inMitchell Library, Sydney, Australia. University of British Columbia Special Collections.Clerke, Charles. Journal. Beaglehole 111:2, 1301-1339.252Cook, James. A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. . . . Ed. Bishop Douglas.A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. .. . [Abridged ed.] Printed for John Stockdale et al.The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776-1780. Ed. J.C. Beaglehole.[Cook, James.] The British Navigator; Containing Captain Cook’s Three Voyages Round theWorld.... London: John Fielding, 1783.Captain Cook’s Three Voyages Round the World: with a Sketch of His Life. Ed. Charles R.Low. Routledge’s Excelsior Series # 57. London: Routledge, 1880 (CIHM 14801).Captain Cook’s Voyages of Discovery. Ed. Sir John Barrow. Everyman’s Library: Traveland Topography Series. London: JM Dent and New York: EP Dutton, 1906.A Compendious History of Captain Cook’s [Last] Voyage.... London: G. Kearsley, 1784.The Third and Last Voyage of Captain Cook. Intro. Hugh Reginald Haweis. Routledge’sWorld Library. London and New York: Routledge, 1886 (CIHM 29559).A Voyage to the PacWc Ocean.... [Dublin, 1784] (CIHM 42436).Cook, James, Arthur Phillip, and Constantin John Phipps. A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean.with The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay. Newcastle, 1790 (CIHM 17753).Cook, James and Tobias Furneaux. Captain Cook’s Voyages Round the World. .. includingCaptain Furneaux’s Journal of his Proceedings during the Separation of the Ships....Newcastle, 1790 (CIHM 17752).Douglas, Bishop John. A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of HisMajesty, for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere. To Determine the Positionand Extent of the West Side of North America; its Distance from Asia; and thePracticability of a Northern Passage to Europe. Performed Under the Direction ofCaptains Cook, Clerke, and Gore, in His Majesty’s Ships the Resolution and Discovery.In the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780. 3 Vols. London: Printed by W. & A.Strahan for G. Nicol and T. Cadell, 1784.Edgar, Thomas. Portion of an Incomplete Journal. Dublin, 1784 (CIHM 18145).Ellis, William. An Authentic Narrative of a Voyage Performed by Captain Cook.... London, 1782(CIHM 37249).King, James. Journal. Beaglehole 111:2, 1361-1454.Ledyard, John. John Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage. Ed. James Kenneth253Munford et a). Oregon State Monographs: Studies in History #3. Corvallis, OR: OregonState University Press, 1963.A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacfic Ocean, and in Quest of a NorthWest Passage, between Asia and America; Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, and1779. 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