Captain James Cook discovered Maui on November 26, 1778, as he sailed southwestward from Alaska on his last voyage. His record for the day gives us the first description of Haleakala: “An elevated hill appeared in the country, whose summit rose above the clouds. The land, from this hill, fell in a gradual slope, terminating in a steep, rocky coast; the sea breaking against it in a most dreadful surf.... On the 30th ... another island was seen to the windward, called, by the natives, _Owhyhee_. That along which we had been for some days, was called _Mowee_.”[3]
After sailing along the eastern and southern coasts of the island of Hawaii in its two armed ships, _Resolution_ and _Discovery_, the expedition landed at Kealakekua Bay on January 17, 1779. Captain Cook was worshipped as the incarnation of the god Lono, but he overstayed his welcome, ill-will and violence taking its place. A climax was reached over the theft of a ship’s cutter, which was broken up merely for its nails and ironware. On February 14, Cook tried to seize the aged king Kalaniopuu to hold as a hostage until reparation was made. In the scuffle that ensued, the Great Mariner was killed by an _alii_, who thrust quite through his back an iron dagger, a chief article of trade of the Expedition. Upon departure toward the northwest, the survivors reached Maalaea Bay on February 24, on which date the journal remarks about Maui: “This side of the island forms the same distant view as the north-east; ... the hilly parts, connected by a low flat isthmus, having, at the first view, the appearance of two separate islands.”
The ill-fated French explorer, Count Jean Francois de Galaup de la Perouse, arrived with his two frigates on May 28, 1786, in the bay southwest of Haleakala that today bears his name. He recorded: “At every instant we had just cause to regret the country we had left behind us; and to add to our mortification, we did not find an anchoring place well sheltered till we came to a dismal coast where torrents of lava had formerly flowed like the cascades which pour forth their water in other parts of the island.”[4] This reference is to the latest flows of Haleakala. See page 37.
On Vancouver’s first exploring expedition to the islands, Edward Bell made the following entry for March 6, 1792 in the log of the _Chatham_: “... the south shore ... had by no means a very inviting appearance,—it was remarkably high and seemed extremely barren;—from the top of the Mountains to the waters edge are deep Gullies or ruts form’d I suppose by the water running down,—and there appeared but little wood on this side (except towards the Top) and as little Cultivation, here and there we saw a few Huts and a small Village, several of which appeared half way up.”