158 On the Aborigines of Brazil. 



He had one and twenty Indian rowers. They suddenly 

 got the alarm that there was a case of small-pox in the 

 ship, when they instantly sprang overboard, into deep 

 water and made for the shore, leaving the Europeans to 

 shift for themselves. Dobrizhofer relates of some of the 

 wild Indians, that on intelligence of the approach of small- 

 pox, they do not fly in a straight line from their homes, 

 but double about in all directions, thinking thus to be more 

 likely to escape their deadly foe. In the year 1819 an 

 epidemic of small-pox prevailed in Para, from which about 

 8000 men suffered, and of which at the worst time 36 to 68 

 died daily. The epidemic which in the year 1734 attacked 

 the thirty settlements of the Jesuits in Paraguay, was a fearful 

 one. Of the population then estimated at 140,000 souls, 

 30,000 died. In the year 1765, when the settlements were 

 increased to thirty-two, 12,000 Indians died. On the whole 

 it is to be observed, that the epidemic is always more viru- 

 lent where many people live close together, than where the 

 huts are single and scattered, and this is of course more 

 common among Indians than European settlers. Experi- 

 ence has also hitherto proved, that the worst small-pox 

 epidemics, which have worked the greatest havoc among 

 the red men, have originated from newly imported negroes, 

 and gradually spread inwards from the coast. This too was 

 the case with an epidemic in Para in 1819, which was in- 

 troduced by a slave ship from the N. W. coast of Africa. 



We observe few Indians with small-pox marks, as most 

 of them die under the disease. Blind and deaf Indians were 

 in some places the only remains that I found of whole vil- 

 lages. The Brazilian doctors assume, that under the most 

 favourable circumstances one-fourth of those attacked are 

 saved. 



It is on the whole proved by general experience that mixed 

 races, negroes, and white men, get through the disease 

 much more easily than the Indians. 



