32 



by Dutch officers at Koepang, in Timor, these annual visits 

 had begun only about twenty years previously, i.e., about 

 1783 (2 7, II., 231 and 257). This date is suggestive, for it 

 permits of the possibility that the disease might have 

 existed in Australia even before the 1789 outbreak in Sydney, 

 and it is therefore also quite possible that the latter might 

 have originated in this way, and not from the English ships. 

 We have already alluded to the difficulty, under the latter 

 hypothesis, raised by the long delay of fifteen months before 

 the disease manifested itself. Moreover, the very long 

 interval of forty years which elapsed between the first out- 

 break and those occurring on the east and south-east in 1830 

 and subsequently, without any apparent connection, also sug- 

 gests a fresh introduction, and for this the only source we 

 know of is the northern coast. 



And, if contact with the Malays was, as Mr. Foelsche 

 and others believe, the origin of the epidemics occurring in 

 the Northern Territory about 1862-5, it would have been a 

 natural process for the disease to have spread down the 

 Western Australian coast — indeed, as we have said, most 

 of the outbreaks in that State occurred between 1865-70. 



To account for its presence in Perth before 1829 (the 

 date of its first settlement) we should have to look to an 

 earlier invasion, which might, however, have had, as we have 

 suggested, a similar northern origin and have been trans- 

 mitted along a similar route. In this instance, however, we 

 have not, as in the case of the later epidemics of north- 

 western Australia, the history of a whole series of outbreaks 

 the occurrence of which at about the same time, and in 

 localities more or less adjacent both to one another and to 

 the districts visited by the Malays, is strongly suggestive not 

 only of the place of origin of the disease, but of a pro- 

 gressive onward march. Still, even in the absence of similar 

 evidence of continuous progress in the former case, it is 

 easier to suppose that in this, also, it had the same origin 

 and travelled by the same route than to believe that the 

 disease, having originated in the east, passed to the west 

 throughout the whole length of the continent, which hypo- 

 thesis would, moreover, have involved its transit through very 

 sparsely-populated and desert regions. 



It is therefore to be regarded as more probable that the 

 various epidemics of Western Australia resulted from the 

 transmission, down the coast, of the disease originating from 

 the Malays than that it, or they, should have spread 

 from the east across the whole width of Australia. 



To account for its presence in Central Australia we 

 must suppose that it reached this region from the east or 



