APPEARANCE AMONG THE ABORIGINES. 153 



in October last year, (1830,) and continued to 

 affect the blacks in that vicinity to December. 

 The poor creatures blamed Captain Sturt for its 

 introduction,* were much alarmed about it, and 

 are represented as having anticipated some 

 grievous calamity ; a great fire and flood were 

 predicted by one of their sages, which would 

 come from Mount Harris and destroy them. 

 From the testimony of George Clark, a convict, 

 who had resided with the native tribes, far in 

 the interior, for several years, and was lately 

 taken prisoner by the mounted police the dis- 

 ease proceeded from the north-west coast, and 

 spared none of the tribes as far as Liverpool 

 Plains, attacking twenty and thirty at a time, 

 none escaping its fury. The king, or chief of 



* This is not uncommon among savage nations ; the in- 

 troduction of dysentery at Otaheite, or Tahiti, was attri- 

 buted to Vancouver ; and in Beechey's interesting narrative we 

 are told that the Pitcairn islanders had imbibed similar notions 

 with regard to shipping calling at their island, of leaving 

 them a legacy of some disease. Mr. Hamilton Hume, (the 

 well-known Australian traveller,) who accompanied Captain 

 Sturt in his expedition to the northward, says the natives 

 were suffering severely from this eruptive malady, when 

 they arrived among them, and numbers had died, and many 

 more were still dying, from its virulence. The description of 

 the disease he gave me accords in most points with that 

 given by Dr. Mair. 



