The Night of Heathenism, 209 
time IS a very sad one. The disease appears to have been 
carried to Fiji, by H.M.S. Dido^ an English man-of-war, in 
which King Thakombau and his sons returned from Sydney, 
after paying their respects to Sir Hercules Robinson. At 
Sydney, two of the king's sons, and two servants, took the 
disease, in a mild form, and on the voyage home the old 
king complained somewhat, but was not actually laid aside. 
On reaching Levuka, all seemed so well that no thought of 
quarantine was entertained, and the royal party landed. 
Very shortly after, chiefs and people assembled from all the 
islands in the group to pay their respects to Thakombau, 
with the result that the infection was there and then com- 
municated to hundreds of people. These went home, and 
in their turn spread the infection among others. Measles, 
when first introduced among a savage people, assume a 
dreadful virulence, and appear to be almost like the plague. 
When stricken, and suffering, the half-delirious natives would 
reject English treatment and medicine, and rush into the 
sea, to cool the raging fever ; thus insuring certain death. 
Inflammation of lungs, pleurisy, and other diseases followed, 
so that the death-roll became enormous. At Bau, or Mbau, 
nearly all the nobles died ; in the mountainous districts, the 
sick outnumbered the well, and many who would otherwise 
have struggled through, perished from starvation, for nobody 
could get to the gardens to obtain food. By dint of care 
and good treatment, the students in the missionary insti- 
tutions, and the native constabulary, were nearly all saved, 
but the mass of the stricken ones perished like rotten sheep. 
At last, dead bodies lay about in such numbers unburied, 
that a plague of pestilence was dreaded. Europeans and 
natives strove together to avert this, and succeeded in doing 
so by timely measures. It has been computed that over 
40,000 of the population died in this terrible visitation. 
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