CHAP. II.] THE NATIVES. 21 



Their mode of living is certainly a predisposing, 

 rather than an actual, cause of disease. The skin, 

 having become tender, is easily susceptible to cli- 

 matic influences and other accidental causes, or to 

 contagious diseases of different descriptions, which 

 find a fertile soil in a constitution thus weakened. 

 But many of the prevailing diseases arise from bad 

 living only. They consist in scrophulous indura- 

 tions and ulcerations of the lymphatic glands of 

 the neck, lymphatic swellings, inflammation of the 

 eyes ; impurities of the blood, shown in frequent 

 abscesses and chronic eruptions ; malignant fevers, 

 with affections of the mucous membranes of the 

 intestinal canal and other mucous membranes. 

 In Roturua a party of natives set out on a travel- 

 ling excursion : on the road they buried some boiled 

 pork, that they might feast upon it at their return : 

 this they did ; but they were all seized with a dan- 

 gerous delirious fever, and some of them died. Fish 

 dried without salt is often sent to natives in the 

 interior by their relations living on the sea-coast. 

 At the time when this is eaten sickness is common. 

 I have often known gastric fevers caused exclusively 

 by the use of rotten corn. Acute exanthematie 

 diseases have never been observed here by me ; and 

 it is to be hoped that the speedy introduction of 

 vaccination may preserve the natives from the ra- 

 vages of small-pox. If the syphilitic or gonorrhoeal 

 contagion, which is now very frequent on the 

 coasts, infect a frame thus constituted; the result 



