XIX DECREASE OF THE ABORIGINES 463 



European diseases (even the milder ones of which, such as the 

 measles,^ prove very destructive), and to the gradual extinction 

 of the wild animals. It is said that numbers of their children 

 invariably perish in very early infancy from the effects of their 

 wandering life ; and as the difficulty of procuring food increases, 

 so must their wandering habits increase ; and hence the 

 population, without any apparent deaths from famine, is 

 repressed in a manner extremely sudden compared to v/hat 

 happens in civilised countries, where the father, though in 

 adding to his labour he may injure himself, does not destroy 

 his offspring. 



Besides these several evident causes of destruction, there 

 appears to be some more mysterious agency generally at work. 

 Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the 

 aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the Americas, 

 Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia, and we find 

 the same result. Nor is it the white man alone that thus acts 

 the destroyer ; the Polynesian of Malay extraction has in parts 

 of the East Indian archipelago thus driven before him the 

 dark-coloured native. The varieties of man seem to act on 

 each other in the same way as different species of animals — 

 the stronger always extirpating the weaker. It was melancholy 

 at New Zealand to hear the fine energetic natives saying that 

 they knew the land was doomed to pass from their children. 

 Every one has heard of the inexplicable reduction of the 

 population in the beautiful and healthy island of Tahiti since 

 the date of Captain Cook's voyages : although in that case we 

 might have expected that it would have been increased ; for 

 infanticide, which formerly prevailed to so extraordinary a 

 degree, has ceased, profligacy has greatly diminished, and the 

 murderous wars become less frequent. 



The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work,^ says that 

 the first intercourse between natives and Europeans " is 

 invariably attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery, 



^ It is remarkable how the same disease is modified in dififerent climates. At 

 the little island of St. Helena the introduction of scarlet-fever is dreaded as a plague. 

 In some countries foreigners and natives are as differently affected by certain 

 contagious disorders, as if they had been different animals ; of which fact some 

 instances have occurred in Chile ; and, according to Humboldt, in Mexico {Polit. 

 Essay, Neiu Spain, vol. iv. ) 



2 Narrative of Missionary E)ilcrpyise, p. 282. 



