the north-west coast, of which most took place between 1865 

 and 1870, and he states that as early as 1829 pock-marked 

 blacks were seen in the neighbourhood of Perth (3.. 219). 



According to Foelsche (13, 7) small-pox broke out among 

 the natives around Ports Darwin and Essington about 1862, 

 and he makes mention of a plant the juice of which is used 

 as a remedy. 



Wilson also in his account of a voyage made in 1828 

 (14, 319) gives in his vocabulary of the Raffles Bay tribe a 

 word, Oie or Boie, for small-pox which shows that they had 

 had, even then, experience of it. 



Other references to the existence of small-pox in the 

 Northern Territory about 1865 will be found in Curr's 

 chapter. 



That small-pox had existed as far into the interior as 

 Lake Eyre appears from Gason's account of the Dieyerie 

 tribe (1> 283), and Foelsche, who knew the natives well, 

 states (13, 8) that "no doubt it spread a long distance inland, 

 as pock-marked natives are found among all the inland 

 tribes." 



There is evidence also of its presence still farther north, 

 for Mr. Gillen, whose work in conjunction with Professor 

 Spencer on the Central and Northern Australian tribes is so 

 well known, writes me (May 24, 1911) that thirty years 

 ago when he lived at Alice Springs it was a common thing 

 to see old natives pitted with small-pox all along the tele- 

 graph, line from Charlotte Waters to Barrow Creek : but he 

 saw no young natives similarly marked. Old blacks of the 

 Arunta tribe, which occupies a large part of the tract of 

 country just mentioned — that is the heart of Australia — 

 had a tradition that a terrible disease traversed their country 

 and destroyed great numbers of their people. When Mr. 

 Gillen went to live at Moonta ten or twelve years ago he 

 found that a similar tradition obtained among the Yorke 

 Peninsula (Narrunga or Narrang-ga) tribe, and an old man 

 told him of a place — an old camping-ground — where many 

 of the victims had been buried, but he was never able to 

 find it. 



The disease is also recorded from Central Australia by 

 Tietkins (13, 112), who mentions that out of fifteen or twenty 

 blacks who visited his camp at the Rawlinson Ra.nges 

 (24° 30' southern latitude, 127° 42' E. longitude) in 1873 

 eight were unmistakably marked with small-pox. 



According to Curr it never made its appearance in Gipps- 

 land, nor, according to the same writer, is there any record 

 of it among the natives of the Australian Bight, though he 

 appears to have overlooked a reference to its former presence 



