30 



at Streaky and Fowler Bays (13, 112), where it was believed 

 to have come from the north. 



As regards Queensland, the only mention of the occur- 

 rence of the disease in this State by an early writer that I 

 have so far discovered is made by Lang (2 3, 340), who speaks 

 of it as a "variolous disease, somewhat similar to the small- 

 pox," and as affecting a tribe of natives on the Upper Bris- 

 bane River. He further mentioned that vaccination was a 

 specific. 



Later, in 1904, Miss Petrie states (2 6, 65) that when 

 her father first came to North Pine (16 miles from Brisbane) 

 pock-marks "were strong on some of the old men" (this was 

 not long after 1837), who told him that the sickness had come 

 among them long before the advent of the white people, 

 killing off numbers of their comrades. "Pock-marks they 

 called nuram-nuram — the same name as that given to any 

 wart. From this Neurum-Neurum Creek gets its name." 



References to outbreaks in other localities mig(ht be 

 given, but enough has been said to show that a disease, which 

 is always described either as small-pox or as one very closely 

 resembling it, has been spread so widely, and perhaps more 

 than once, among the Australian natives as to to deserve the 

 term pandemic. 



The Question of a Possible Connection between the 

 Sydney Epidemic of 1789 and the Subsequent Outbreaks. 



We must now return to the inquiry whether any con- 

 nection can be traced between the Sydney epidemic in 1789 

 and that, or those, occurring subsequently in many places. 



Dealing first with the manifestations in eastern and 

 south-eastern Australia — where such a connection might 

 most reasonably be expected to be traceable — if such a 

 connection had existed it is remarkable that for more 

 than forty years we find no sign of a recrudescence of any 

 epidemic similar to that in Sydney. 



Where was the infection during all these years ? Did 

 the next observed outbreaks, of which several seem to have 

 occurred in 1830 or a few years afterwards, originate inde- 

 pendently, or did the embers of the Sydney disease remain 

 smouldering, somehow and somewhere, during this long 

 period, to burst into flame again forty years afterwards ? 

 These are not easy questions to answer, and either supposition 

 involves difficulties. 



If the later outbreaks of 1830-5 were the aftermath of 

 the epidemic of 1789 then we are quite unable to trace the 

 connection between the two. For, apart from the length 

 of the interval, it is difficult to see how, in the case of 



