Around this production the battle has raged awhile. As it was exposed
for sale more than once, failing to attract attention, and had evidently
been manipulated, suspicion was naturally excited, and one well known
official expert assured me it was practically worthless. A bad
impression was made by the assertion of Mr. Corner that the _Log_ was in
Cook's handwriting. As the Record Office, as well as the British Museum,
could show a number of Cook's own letters, official and private, experts
could not be deceived.
It may, nevertheless, have proceeded from the same source as some others
of a later date, as that one in Royal Possession, and the one in the
keeping of the Admiralty. In fact, the latter is very similar in its
text to _Corner's_ Log, always excepting the reference to _Botany Bay_
instead of Cook's own appellation of _Stingray Harbour_, and the
insertion of the name of _New South Wales_, or _New Wales_, instead of
the total absence of those words in ALL the Logs of Cook and his
officers.
It was evident to me, as to others, that several copies, more or less
similar, had been sent to England after the last day's record in any
_Log_ upon leaving New Holland, the name of which is alone the heading
of any page of a _Log_.
I have not seen the so-called _Queen's_ Log, but any one who examined
_Corner's_ Log, as many did, would see that it came here originally with
blank spaces for certain days, and others were vacant to receive the
proper names of places, which had, it is to be presumed, to be added in
this country!!
It is, however, not a little puzzling to find that Cook, who is
_reported_ to have sent these copies from Batavia, while staying there,
should have allowed a copy for the Admiralty to go off with NEW SOUTH
WALES as the name of the new territory, and send another (Corner's)
bearing the denomination of NEW WALES. Still more extraordinary that
Cook's own well ascertained _Logs_, two in the British Museum and one at
Sunderland--the only ones extant--should have neither _New South Wales_,
_New Wales_, nor _Botany Bay_ mentioned.
The knowledge of such circumstances might well have caused experts to
entertain doubts.
I had this hawked-about _Log_ in my possession, and took tracings of
portions, satisfying a well-known historian, and valued public officer
at the Record Office, that the Log before us had been tampered with.
Although one of the empty spaces had, as in other cases, been filled up,
in a handwriting different from that in the text, as _Port Jackson_,
which never appears in the Logs of Cook and his officers, it was easy to
suppose it referred to a Secretary to the Admiralty, Sir George Jackson,
afterwards recognised as Sir George Duckett, the great friend to Bishop
Stortford.
Erasures and re-writing are not confined to _Botany Bay_. _Rockingham
Bay_ has evidently had two earlier changes. Halifax Bay has similarly
suffered. If adopted, as some fancy, as the Log used by Dr. Hawkesworth,
considerable freedom was used.
The signatures to all Cook's genuine logs and copies is _Jam^s Cook_,
with a grand flourish; but Corner's has _James Cook_ only.