464 NEW SOUTH WALES 



or some other disease which carries off numbers of the people.' 

 Again he affirms, " It is certainly a fact, which cannot be 

 controverted, that most of the diseases which have raged in the 

 islands during my residence there, have been introduced by 

 ships ; ^ and what renders this fact remarkable is, that there 

 might be no appearance of disease among the crew of the ship 

 which conveyed this destructive importation." This statement 

 is not quite so extraordinary as it at first appears ; for several 

 cases are on record of the most malignant fevers having broken 

 out, although the parties themselves, who were the cause, were 

 not affected. In the early part of the reign of George III, a 

 prisoner who had been confined in a dungeon was taken in a 

 coach with four constables before a magistrate ; and, although 

 the man himself was not ill, the iour constables died from a 

 short putrid fever ; but the contagion extended to no others. 

 From these facts it would almost appear as if the effluvium of one 

 set of men shut up for some time together was poisonous when 

 inhaled by others ; and possibly more so, if the men be of 

 different races. Mysterious as this circumstance appears to be, it 

 is not more surprising than that the body of one's fellow-creature, 

 directly after death, and before putrefaction has commenced, 

 should often be of so deleterious a quality that the mere 

 puncture from an instrument used in its dissection should 

 prove fatal. 



I yth. — Early in the morning we passed the Nepean in a 



1 Captain Beechey (chap. iv. vol. i.) states that the inhabitants of Pitcairn 

 Island are firmly convinced that after the arrival of every ship they suffer cutaneous 

 and other disorders. Captain Beechey attributes this to the change of diet during 

 the time of the visit. Dr. Macculloch ( Western Isles, vol. ii. p. 32) says, " It is 

 asserted, that on the arrival of a stranger (at St. Kilda) all the inhabitants, in the 

 common phraseology, catch a cold." Dr. Macculloch considers the whole case, 

 although often previously affirmed, as ludicrous. He adds, however, that "the 

 question was put by us to the inliabitants who unanimously agreed in the story." 

 In Vancouver's Voyage there is a somewhat similar statement with respect to 

 Otaheite. Dr. Dieffenbach, in a note to his translation of this Journal, states that 

 the same fact is universally believed by the inhabitants of the Chatham Islands, and 

 in parts of New Zealand. It is impossible that such a belief should have become 

 universal in the northern hemisphere, at the Antipodes, and in the Pacific, without 

 some good foundation. Humboldt [Polit. Essay on King, of New Spain, vol. iv.) 

 says that the great epidemics at Panama and Callao are ' ' marked " by the arrival of 

 ships from Chile, because the people from that temperate region first experience the 

 fatal effects of the torrid zones. I may add, that I have heard it stated in Shropshire 

 that sheep, which have been imported from vessels, although themselves in a healthv 

 condition, if placed in the same fold with others, frequently produce sickness in the 

 flock. 



