The Fatal Impact Author:Alan Moorehead When Captain Cook entered the Pacific in1769 it was a virgin ocean, pristine and savage, and its inhabitamts lived a life of primeval innocence. Seventy years later firearms, didease, and alcohol had hammered away at this way of life until it crimbled before them, and where Satan had sown, the Protestant missionaries reaped: the Tahitians, who h... more »ad known no God but Love, cane to accept the morality of an English suburb; the Australian aborigines were ousted from their fertile valleys by convict settlements; in Antarctica the pristine wildlife was jostled to extinction by merchants and hunters. In this book Alan Moorehead tells the tragic story of a great adventure which turned sour, in which good intentions led to disaster, corruption, and annihilation. And ironically it was Cook, the greatest and most hum,ane explorer of his day, who was tom cause the final impact.« less