28 



The Sydney epidemic occurred, it will be remembered, in 

 1789; that outbreak appears to have run its course and died 

 out, for, so far as the records are concerned, we hear no 

 more of any similar occurrence until 1830 or 1831, or more 

 than forty years later. About that date an outbreak is 

 reported to have occurred at Bathurst, New South Wales, and 

 at King's Plains, 27 miles west of this place. Under the 

 native word Nguya (pustule) Teichelmann and Schiirmann 

 (12, 34) add a note to the effect that, about the same date, 

 1830, a disease (small-pox) was universal among the natives 

 of the Adelaide tribe and diminished their numbers consider- 

 ably. It is also, there, stated that it came from the east or 

 the Murray tribes. The disease is again reported from Scone, 

 New South Wales, 200 miles north of Sydney, about 1833-5, 

 and from various other places in Victoria or New South Wales 

 between the years 1840 and 1845. Besides these reports, 

 referring to definite outbreaks, the dates of which are ap- 

 proximately fixed, there will be found in the chapter of 

 Curr's work referred to many other statements from people 

 who, writing some years after the actual outbreaks, had seen 

 the blacks bearing pock-marks. 



One such reference may be particularly noticed here. 

 It appears that at a date which, according to the context of 

 the letter reporting it (3, I., 218), may be put about 1807 

 smallpox has committed "awful ravages" at Swan Hill, on the 

 Murray. 



Farther north Mitchell (2 2, I., 26) records in 1831 an 

 outbreak of which he himself was a witness at Curringai, in 

 the Liverpool Range; and later, in 1835 (2 2, 1., 218), he 

 speaks of having seen pock-marked blacks at Fort Bourke and 

 at several other places lower down the Darling, and he alludes 

 to the native population of this river as having been reduced 

 by small-pox. Sturt also (21, I., 105) in speaking of the 

 natives of this river, says "that their tribe did not bear any 

 proportion to the number of their habitations. It was evi- 

 dent that their population had been thinned." 



It will thus be seen that all the outbreaks, so far men- 

 tioned, occurred in eastern and south-eastern Australia ; that 

 nearly all of them were among the blacks of the Murray 

 riverine system ; and that while most of those of which the 

 dates are definitely stated occurred between 1830 and 1845, 

 one outbreak (Swan Hill) may have occurred as early as 

 1807. After 1845 the disease seems, if not to have once 

 more disappeared from these regions, to have, at least, sub- 

 sided in extent and virulence. 



In Western Australia Curr records outbreaks of, ap- 

 parently, the same disease occurring at various localities on 



