520 



NEW SOUTH WALES. 



Jan. 1836. 



more numerous than the first, and not so well clothed. This 

 decrease, no doubt, must be partly owing to the introduction 

 of spirits, to European diseases (even the milder ones of 

 which, as the measles,* prove very destructive), and to the 

 gradual extinction of the wild animals. It is said that num- 

 bers of their children invariably perish in very early infancy 

 from the effects of their wandering life. As the difficulty of 

 procuring food increases, so must their wandering habits 5 

 and hence the population, without any apparent deaths from 

 famine, is repressed in a manner extremely sudden com- 

 pared to what happens in civilized countries, where the father 

 may add to his labour, without destroying his offspring. 



Besides these several evident causes of destruction, there 

 appears to be some more mysterious agency generally at 

 work. Wherever the European has trod, death seems to 

 pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of 

 the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 Australia, and we shall find the same result. Nor is it the 

 white man alone, that thus acts the destroyer ; the Polynesian 

 of Malay extraction has in parts of the East Indian archi- 

 pelago, thus driven before him the dark-coloured native. The 

 varieties of man seem to act on each other ; in the same way 

 as different species of animals — the stronger always extir- 

 pating the weaker. It was melancholy at New Zealand to 

 hear the fine energetic natives saying, they knew the land 

 was doomed to pass from their children. Every one has heard 

 of the inexplicable reduction of the population in the beautiful 

 and healthy island of Tahiti since the date of Captain Cook's 

 voyages : although in that case we might have expected it 

 would have been otherwise ; for infanticide, which formerly 



* It is remarkable how the same disease is modified in different chmates. 

 At the Httle island of St. Helena, the introduction of scarlet fever is 

 dreaded as a plague. In some countries, foreigners and natives are as 

 differently affected by certain contagious disorders, as if they had been dif- 

 ferent animals ; of which fact some instances have occurred in Chile ; 

 and, according to Humboldt, in Mexico. (Polit. Essay on Kingdom of 

 New Spain, voh iv.) 



