Pearling Life at the Present Day. 173 



for a short time, but the South-Australian Govern- 

 ment besides enforcing heavy license fees, offered no 

 inducement to get the coast prospected, and at the 

 present time there is not a single pearling boat left 

 in the waters of the northern territory. The dream 

 of wealth has vanished, and the golden goose is 

 asleep, if not dead. 



The fifteenth death occured on May 6th, on 

 arrival at Koepang, where the Solor men were 

 paid off. The last death happened very suddenly 

 in the street, two hours after paying off. The 

 loss in one month was thus sixteen out of the 

 sixty-one men originally shipped from Solor. 



The disease from v/hich these men died is 

 called Beri-beri, and it appears to be allied closely 

 to dropsy ; large numbers of sailors die of it yearly, 

 and in the tin-mining districts of Perak, there are 

 sometimes as many as 950 Chinamen in hospital 

 at one time. Even the best qualified doctors are 

 at a loss to determine its cause or its cure. Our 

 own experience tends to point to the long-continued 

 rice-diet as the cause, and the natives themselves 

 are beginning to believe this. 



In the " Sree Pas-Sair" the Solorese attributed 

 the deaths to the coast of New Guinea "being 

 unlucky," but the ship herself remains as popular as 

 ever. The " Flowerdale," another pearling schooner, 



