under his observation, he with due regard to the religious significance of the date of their discovery, named them the Three Kings in honour of the Wise Men from the East. This was his last act before departing, for the appearance of another band of Maoris so terrified him that he finally sailed away from this country without having set foot hereon, within a month of having first sighted “a great land uplifted high”—the shores of Old Westland.
Of the one hundred and twenty-eight years immediately following Tasman’s visit, nothing authentic is known of Westland’s history. Then Captain James Cook, on the occasion of his first voyage round the world in H.M.S. Endeavour, sailed along its shores and, sighting Aorangi, gave his own illustrious name to the mighty monarch of the Southern Alps. Cook was not impressed with Westland, which he described as “an inhospitable shore, unworthy of observation, except for its ridge of naked and barren rocks covered with snow. As far as the eye could reach the prospect was wild, craggy and desolate.”
Cook’s voyage was brought about by the fact that the Royal Society, in anticipation of the transit of Venus in 1769, decided that it was essential to despatch a properly equipped vessel, in command of a competent officer, to the South Seas for observation purposes, Cook being selected to lead the expedition on account of being an acknowledged authority in mathe-
