manner extremely sudden compared to what happens in civilized
countries, where the father, though in adding to his labour he may
injure himself, does not destroy his offspring.
Besides the several evident causes of destruction, there appears to be
some more mysterious agency generally at work. Wherever the European
has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the
wide extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and
Australia, and we find the same result. Nor is it the white man alone
that thus acts the destroyer; the Polynesian of Malay extraction has in
parts of the East Indian archipelago, thus driven before him the
dark-coloured native. The varieties of man seem to act on each other
in the same way as different species of animals--the stronger always
extirpating the weaker. It was melancholy at New Zealand to hear the
fine energetic natives saying that they knew the land was doomed to
pass from their children. Every one has heard of the inexplicable
reduction of the population in the beautiful and healthy island of
Tahiti since the date of Captain Cook's voyages: although in that case
we might have expected that it would have been increased; for
infanticide, which formerly prevailed to so extraordinary a degree, has
ceased; profligacy has greatly diminished, and the murderous wars
become less frequent.
The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work, [2] says, that the first
intercourse between natives and Europeans, "is invariably attended with
the introduction of fever, dysentery, or some other disease, which
carries off numbers of the people." Again he affirms, "It is certainly
a fact, which cannot be controverted, that most of the diseases which
have raged in the islands during my residence there, have been
introduced by ships; [3] and what renders this fact remarkable is, that
there might be no appearance of disease among the crew of the ship
which conveyed this destructive importation." This statement is not
quite so extraordinary as it at first appears; for several cases are on
record of the most malignant fevers having broken out, although the
parties themselves, who were the cause, were not affected. In the
early part of the reign of George III., a prisoner who had been
confined in a dungeon, was taken in a coach with four constables before
a magistrate; and although the man himself was not ill, the four
constables died from a short putrid fever; but the contagion extended
to no others. From these facts it would almost appear as if the
409