Are We a Declining Race ? 



infirmities ; their senses are acute, and they retain 

 their beautiful teeth to the last." 



The first to come under the baneful influence 

 of the foreigner were the first to suffer, and a little 

 more than twenty years later, when Captain 

 Vancouver visited the island, he found that the 

 personal attractions of the women did not 

 correspond with the accounts of former naviga- 

 tors. " According to the natives, they had fallen 

 off in their looks, which they attributed to their 

 indiscriminate commerce with Europeans, and 

 to the loathsome diseases they had received from 

 their visitors." 



The Sandwich Islands were discovered by 

 Cook in the year 1778. Forty years later the 

 native deterioration was thus commented upon 

 in the " London Encyclopedia " : 



" The face of things since the time of Cook 

 has been completely changed, the cloak of 

 vermil-tinctured feathers once worn by the 

 chieftains has been exchanged for a guise of 

 European fashion, and the plumy sceptre, or 

 kahele, which was wont to precede persons of 

 distinction, is now displaced by some foreign 



badge of rank and office Nor has 



the outward garb alone undergone a great 

 change since that period, if we may judge of the 

 present generation by comparing them with a 

 few old men who are the survivors of the last ; 

 for there has been a great falling off in mental 

 activity and manly fortitude. An observer dis- 

 covers a certain nobility of disposition indicated 

 by the carriage of the elder race, and a certain 

 frankness of humour of which he cannot discern 

 48 



