YOUR report about the sale of an item from James Cook's medicine chest stated he discovered Australia (September 24).
Captain Cook was a brilliant navigator and a fine human being: one of the greatest Yorkshiremen ever to have lived. But he did not "discover" Australia.
That continent was well known to its inhabitants for thousands of years.
Cook and his crew were the first Europeans to visit it.
In this age of the global village, it is time we stopped looking at the world from such a Eurocentric standpoint.
Mary Machen,
Neville Street,
York.
Updated: 09:46 Friday, September 30, 2005
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