1836.] DECREASE OF THE ABORIGINES. 317 



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 

 raged in the islands during my residence there, have been introduced 

 by ships ; * and what renders this fact remarkable i, 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 effluvium of one set of men 

 shut up for some time together was poisonous when inhaled by others; 

 and possibly more so, if the men be of different races. Mysterious as 

 this circumstance appears to be, it is not more surprising than that the 

 body of one's fellow-creature, directly after death, and before putrefac- 

 tion has commenced, should often be of so deleterious a quality, that 

 the mere puncture from an instrument used in its dissection, should 

 prove fatal. 



January ijth. Early in the morning we passed the Nepean in a 

 ferry-boat. The river, although at this spot both broad and deep, had 

 a very small body of running water. Having crossed a low piece of 

 land on the opposite side, we reached the slope of the Blue Mountains 

 The ascent is not steep, the road having been cut with much care on the 

 side of a sandstone cliff. On the summit an almost level plain extends, 



* Captain Becchey (chap, iv., vol. i.) states that the inhabitants of Pitcairn 

 Island are firmly convinced that after the arrival of every ship they suffer 

 cutaneous and other disorders. Captain Beechey attributes this to the 

 change of diet during the time of the visit. Dr. Macculloch (" Western 

 Isles," vol. ii., p. 32) says, " It is asserted, that on the arrival of a stranger 

 (at St. Kilda) all the inhabitants, in the common phraseology, catch a cold." 

 Dr. Macciilloch considers the whole case, although often previously affirmed, 

 as ludicrous. He adds, however, that " the question was put by us to the 

 inhabitants, who unanimouslyagreed in the story." In Vancouver's Voyage, 

 there is a somewhat similar statement with respect to Otaheite. Dr. Dieffen- 

 bach, in a note to his translation of this Journal, states that the same fact is 

 universally believed by the inhabitants of the Chatham Islands, and in parts 

 of New Zealand. It is impossible that such a belief should have become 

 universal in the northern hemisphere, at the Antipodes, and in the Pacific, 

 without some good foundation. Humboldt (" Polit. Essay on King of New 

 Spain," vol. iv.) says, that the great epidemics at Panama and Callao are 

 "marked" by the arrival of ships from Chile, because the people from that 

 temperate region first experience the fatal effects of the torrid zones. I 

 may add, that I have heard it stated in Shropshire, that sheep, which have 

 been imported from vessels, although themselves in a healthy condition, 

 if placed in the same fold with others, frequently produce sickness in the 

 flpck. 



