SECT. II.] DISEASES. 147 



suffers most. Thus Humboldt 1 observes, that the great 

 epidemics of Panama and Callao occurred after the arrival of 

 European ships in Chili. Fever, cholera, etc., destroyed the 

 natives in the South Sea after the arrival of Europeans. The 

 belief that the whites import all diseases is general in the south, 

 the Gambier islands, Rapa, Raivavai, Tubuai, Rurutu, Raro- 

 tonga (Moerenhout), and even among the inhabitants of Pit- 

 cairn (Beechey), in Tahiti. 2 In Rarotonga a destructive pesti- 

 lence broke out immediately after some trading between the 

 natives and the crew of an apparently healthy European ship, 

 (Williams. 3 ) This opinion also prevails in Celebes, where Brooke 

 was on that account prevented from landing. 4 The Boers of 

 the Cape, who under Potgieter visited Algoa Bay, are said to 

 have introduced in that part a croup-like disease, with which 

 they were not themselves affected. 5 The belief that the Whites 

 brought with them a virus, which they let loose upon the 

 natives, prevailed all through New England, caused probably 

 by the circumstance that shortly after the stranding of a French 

 ship near Cape Cod, there broke out among the Indians, in 

 1616, a destructive pestilence, which so depopulated the coast 

 for a distance of several hundred English miles, that the survi- 

 vors were unable to bury the dead. 6 Assuming the correctness 

 of the above statement, we cannot subscribe the mystical and 

 especially in America, popular theory, that the aboriginal 

 race of the new world would, even without drunkenness, war, or 

 imported diseases, have become extinct by the approach of 

 civilization as f ' from a poisonous breath, because nature has 

 devoted it to destruction ; " 7 that its organization is originally 

 defective, carrying within it the germ of death. 8 



There can be no question that, under favourable circumstances, 

 severely visited peoples may recover their losses, as happened 

 in Europe. Such was the case with the Crees in North 



1 " Neu Spanien," iv. 



2 Turnbull, " R. um d. Welt./' p. 266, 1806. 



3 Baseler, " Missions-Blatter," p. 100, 1838. 



4 Brooke, "Narr. of events in Borneo and Celebes," 2nd ed., i, p. 48, 1848. 



5 Livingstone, ii, p. 307. 



6 Drake, " Hist, and antiq. of the city of Boston," p. 30, 1854. 



7 Poppig, Art. " Indier," in Ersch und Gruber. 



8 Martius and Dieffenbach, iiber die Neu-Zealander. 



L2 



