16 DISEASES 01 [PART i. 



thing in our power to prevent injustice or to lessen 

 the extent of it. 



I will now glance at the condition of the abo- 

 rigines before the time at which Europeans came 

 in contact with them, a condition which we still 

 find, with very little change, in the interior of the 

 country. There were even then many causes to 

 prevent an increase of the population, similar to 

 that which would have taken place had the islands 

 been inhabited by Europeans. The families of the 

 natives are not large ; early sexual intercourse pre- 

 vents the natural fruitfulness of the women ; 

 infanticide exists to a certain degree ; the custom 

 of the inhabitants not to cultivate more produce 

 than is necessary to satisfy their common wants, 

 and their being deprived in very rainy seasons even 

 of those scanty means ; their suffering from want 

 during the time of war, since they are usually be- 

 sieged in their fortifications, which are at a dis- 

 tance from their cultivated fields ; war itself, which, 

 although mere skirmishes, carries off a large num- 

 ber of their strongest men, and has often proved so 

 destructive to a tribe, that it has been broken up 

 entirely, and has disappeared ; the belief in witch- 

 craft (makuta), to which many have fallen victims, 

 both of the bewitched, from the mere force of ima- 

 gination, and also of the supposed perpetrators of 

 the crime, who have been murdered in revenge by 

 the relations ; the practice of slavery, which in no 

 form, even the mildest, contributes to increase the 



