39 



But, according to Messrs. Teichelmann and Schiirmann, 

 the date of the disease among the Adelaide tribe was, by a 

 similarly uncertain method of computation, about 1830; or, 

 as these writers put it, "about a decennium" before they 

 wrote, which was in 1840. Now, obviously, a retrospective 

 estimate of ten years based only on the memory of the blacks 

 is less likely to err than one of sixty -or seventy years simi- 

 larly computed, and, if this was the date at which the Adelaide 

 tribe was affected, it is almost certain that this would have 

 been the time at which its neighbours — the Narrinyeri — also 

 suffered. Further, this date of 1830, or thereabouts, is par- 

 ticularly suggestive, for it falls into line with a period at 

 which, as we have; seen, several outbreaks are accurately 

 known to have occurred in New South Wales and Victoria. 



Moreover, if the statement of the old black, Mrs. Kar- 

 ;peny (on whose very positive and unvarying tale I am dis- 

 posed to rely), that she was alive at the time when the 

 catastrophe occurred among her people is correct, its date, on 

 that basis, might be fixed some time between 1830 and 1835 — 

 that is to say, at the period which would correspond to that 

 of the active manifestation of the disease at Bathurst, New 

 South Wales, and at other places in eastern and south- 

 eastern Australia. 



This date would also, to some extent, harmonize with 

 the information given by Mr. Bott's three old black men, 

 for, if they were men of sixty when they told their story 

 in 1881, the personal memory of the oldest of them might 

 well have gone back to 1830, but not to 1807 or even to 

 1814. If, however, the eldest was seventy he might, 

 as a child of four — which would have been his age in 1807 — 

 have retained the memory of a disaster of such magnitude 

 occurring at that date. 



On the whole, therefore, and using the admittedly rather 

 uncertain evidence that is available, the most probable view 

 is that the date of the outbreak among the Narrinyeri and 

 Adelaide tribes was during the quinquennium 1830-5. And 

 if Mrs. Karpeny is correct in her assertion that she never saw 

 pock-marked blacks until they had become thus affected, as 

 the result of the epidemic she claims to have witnessed as a 

 young child, then, so far as the Narrinyeri are concerned, 

 there has been only one such epidemic since the beginning of 

 last century, and the earlier date of 1814 computed by Mr. 

 Taplin must have been based on an overestimate of years that 

 had elapsed. Whether a similar explanation applies to the 

 supposed outbreak at Swan Hill in 1807, or whether there 

 really was an earlier manifestation of the disease in that 

 locality, it seems impossible to say. There is, however, some 



