428 DECREASE OF ABORIGINES, [chap. xix. 



a manner extremely sudden compared to what happens in 

 civilised countries, where the father, though in adding to 

 his labour he may injure himself, does not destroy his 

 offspring. 



Besides these 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 tliewide 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,* says, 

 that the 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 

 raged in the islands during my residence there, have been 

 introduced by ships ; t and what renders this fact remark- 



* "Narrative of Missionary Enterprise," p. 282. 



t Captain Beechey (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. Macculloch 

 considers the whole case, although often previously affirmed, as ludicrous. He 

 adds, however, that " the question was put by us to the inhabitants, who 

 unanimously agreed in the story."- In Vancouver's " Voyage," there is a 

 somewhat similar statement with respect to Otaheite. Dr. Dieffenbach, 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 



