158 FATALITY OF THE DISEASE. 



were unable to walk for a long time, owing to 

 the tenderness of their feet, from which the cu- 

 ticle had entirely separated. In many cases the 

 other sequelse of the disease were very distress- 

 ing ; some lost their eye -sight, others had 

 abscesses in different parts of the body, or foul 

 and tedious ulcers, with great debility and ema- 

 ciation. Death was said to happen generally 

 among the Lachlan and Wellington Valley 

 blacks about the third day after the appear- 

 ance of the eruption ; the tongue became 

 much swollen, and covered with livid spots, 

 the breathing greatly oppressed, and degluti- 

 tion impracticable. Secondary fever was sel- 

 dom observed, and when it occurred seemed 

 owing to cold ; but the rarity of secondary fever 

 is easily explained by the early fatality of the 

 disease in the severe cases in which only it 

 could have been expected. Some were said to 

 have perished at the very onset of the malady, 

 before there was the slightest sign of eruption. 



Among the tribes to the north-west of Liver- 

 pool Plains, the disease seems to have ap- 

 proached more nearly to the description of con- 

 fluent small-pox, as it is met with in Europe. 

 The eruption coalescing on the face, and being- 

 followed in a day or two by salivation, (or as 

 Clark describes it, water pouring from the 



