COOK MEMORIAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 1014, 6 October 1903, Page 2

COOK MEMORIAL.

;(To the Editor Gisborne .Times.;

Sir, —Mr Gautlin’s arguments are scarcely strong enough to cause the Cook monument to be dumped down on a spur of the Kaiti hill. Mr Cfaudin must understand that the majority of the subscribers are non-residents of Poverty Bay, and that they will trust the local subscribers to have it in the most suitable place, viz., Gisborne town. Surely the four or five constituting the committee would not try to dictate to 2700 of a Gisborne population, why not call a public meeting to choose a site ? Mr Gaudin omitted to tell us that the ratepayers would have to pay one hundred pounds per acre for all the Kaiti land required over and above the acre given for the monument site ? Surely if the _ ratepayers who have not subscribed have to pay for the beautifying of Kaiti hill out of the rates they should have a say in the choosing of a site, which would eventually be an expensive ornament to the rising generation, besides entailing hard work on any one climbing up to read the inscription on it, and the probability of seeing the monument some day at the foot of the hill requiring another site for it to be rebuilt on. There is no monument to Columbus where he first landed in America, neither is there one to to Julius Caesar on the Dover Coast. If you wish to spend a large sum of money to build a monument to Captain Cook why not give his successors the benefit of ornamenting their town with his statue, and build a rubble and cement cairn where he first landed, to show the spot and answer equally as ' well ?—I am, etc., E. P. Joyce. ,