1836.] DECREASE OF THE ABORIGINES. 435 



Besides these several evident causes of destruction, there ap- 

 pears to be some more mysterious agency generally at work. 

 "VYlierever 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 M'hite man alone tliat thus acts 

 the destroyer ; the Polynesian of Malay extraction has in parts 

 of the East Indian archipelago, thus driven before him the dark- 

 eoloured 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 melanclioly 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 : altliougli in tliat case we might have expected 

 that it would have been increased ; for infanticide, which for- 

 merly prevailed to so extraordinary a degree, has ceased, profli- 

 gacy has greatly diminished, and the murderous wars become 

 less frequent. 



The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work,* 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 ;■{■ and what 



* 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 sufi'er 

 cutaneous and other disorders. Captain Beechey attributes this to the 

 change of diet during the time of the visit. Dr. MaccuUoch (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. MaccuUoch considers tiie 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. Diefien- 

 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 



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