SECT. II.] CAUSES OF DEPOPULATION. 163 



is limited by the long continued suckling, sometimes up to the 

 sixth year, or several children are suckled at the same time. 1 

 In New Zealand, where the proportion of females to males is 

 small, because many girls are killed immediately after birth, 

 a woman has rarely more than two or three children. 2 Perhaps 

 the trade in preserved ornamented heads may have contributed 

 something to the diminution of the population. 3 Psychical 

 causes also appear to have injuriously affected the physical 

 prosperity of the peoples, such as the feeling of powerless- 

 ness and certain destruction by the Whites, and the loss of 

 authority of the chiefs among their own people 4 a circumstance 

 which also contributed to the decay of the Americans, who are 

 absolutely unfit for slavery. 



The peoples in the Sandwich islands were in former times 

 much oppressed by their own chiefs. The taxes were enormous, 

 and the labour imposed upon them excessive, so that they were 

 compelled to neglect agriculture to cut sandal-wood and perform 

 other work. Many of them ran away ; infanticide and famine 

 raged among them; 5 and even in recent times a progressive 

 poll-tax unfavourably influenced the increase of the popula- 

 tion. 6 About a thousand individuals annually leave their 

 native country, proceeding to California, Columbia and other 

 parts of South America. 7 The aborigines of Australia, the 

 inhabitants, at least, of the known parts of that continent, also 

 approach rapid extinction. A tribe of about three hundred souls 

 is said to have diminished within six years to four individuals. 8 

 The causes of these phenomena are similar to those already 

 stated. The chief of them are diseases communicated to them by 

 European settlers, to which must be added infanticide and great 

 mortality among the children, the small proportion of women, 

 inebriety in the vicinity of the colonies, and sexual excesses. 9 



1 Wilkes, ii, p. 138. 



2 Dieffenbach, ii, p. 33 j Pickering, p. 82. 



3 Quarterly Review, p. 192, June 1854. 



4 Fox, p. 56. 



Jarves, " History of the Sandwich Islands," p. 368, 1843. 

 Walpole, " Four years in the Pacific," ii, p. 245, 2nd edit., 1850. 

 Simpson, "Narr. of a journey round the world," ii, p. 15, 1847. 

 Baseler Miss. Mag., iv, p. 96, 1854. 

 Eyre, " Journals of exped. into central Austr.," ii, p. 320, 1845. 



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