20 



In this writer's "Aboriginal Folklore" (2, 45) he makes 

 the same reference, with the omission of the period at which 

 the disease is supposed to have occurred. Assuming, how- 

 ever, the epidemic of which he speaks to have occurred at 

 about the time referred to in the first-mentioned account the 

 approximate date of its occurrence would be 1814 or there- 

 abouts, or more than twenty years before the foundation of 

 the colony. 



Mr. Howitt, also (4-, 195), speaks of certain propitiatory 

 rites as having been proposed by certain riverine tribes to 

 avert the consequences of a great sickness that they heard 

 was coming down the Murray, and there are other statements 

 to the same effect to which reference will be made later. 

 What has already been said, however, is sufficient to establish, 

 as a starting-point for my inquiry, the fact that at some time 

 prior to the arrival of the white man the natives of the 

 Lower Murray were afflicted with a pestilence of great fatality, 

 and that the Murray riverine system formed a principal 

 channel for its transmission. What the pestilence was and 

 how it originated we shall have also to inquire. 



Origin of the Disease. 



Had there existed any evidence of the existence of dis- 

 ease, a widely-spread disease such as small-pox, among the 

 Australian aborigines before the first colonization settlement 

 in New South Wales in 1788 its presence, or its past effects, 

 would probably not have escaped the notice of the earliest 

 voyagers such as Dampier and Cook. The former came inti- 

 mately in contact with a particular tribe on the north-west 

 coast of what is now Western Australia and gave many 

 details of them, for the most part of an uncomplimentary 

 nature ''2 4, I., 464); while Captain Cook, at different times, 

 saw a good many natives and wrote concerning them, but 

 neither of these travellers make any mention of any char- 

 acteristic affection such as that of which we are speaking ; 

 indeed, the latter traveller expressly states that he saw no 

 marks of disease or sores upon their bodies (25, III., 634). 

 There is also no evidence to show that any disease was 

 communicated to the natives by the white sailors of either 

 expedition. 



The circumstances and possible influence of two subse- 

 quent expeditions to Australia will require a closer scrutiny. 

 The' first of these was that of the English fleet which brought 

 the first convicts to the then newly-founded settlement of 

 New South Wales. This was under the command of Captain 

 Arthur Phillip (who subsequently became the first Governor 

 of the colony), with Captain John Hunter as second in com- 



