WHALING VOYAGE, 
875 
made its exit, both of which, however, had entirely 
healed. He complained of difficulty of breathing, and 
prostration of strength, with frequent hermorrhage from 
the mouth — a proof that the lungs had been perforated, 
an injury that he probably did not long survive. Others 
appeared with bullets embedded in various parts of their 
bodies, the external wounds which had been made on 
their entrance having healed, so that they produced but 
little inconvenience to their possessors. Numbers of 
fine-looking men presented themselves in turn, and com- 
plained of the various injuries that they had received 
during the war, which I should have thought would 
have cooled down their ardour a little, and have caused 
them to be less eager for another affray ; nevertheless 
they appeared full of animation when their next expe- 
dition was spoken of. But if Mars had afflicted them 
so sorely, Venus herself had been much less kind than 
her consort ; their intercourse with foreigners had left 
them diseases that were depopulating the islands;-— 
men, women, and even little children in arms were suf- 
fering from this worst of Pandora's gifts, for the cure or 
alleviation of which they possessed neither knowledge 
nor means. Besides these, which they had brought 
upon themselves from their own imprudence, nature had 
also afflicted them herself with various maladies which 
appear among them spontaneously ; of which I noticed 
more particularly the elephantiasis, or elephant leg, 
which is an enormously diseased growth of one of the 
legs, and w r hich is supposed by some physiologists to 
arise from a peculiar state of the absorbents of the 
