634 
RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE OF ANIMALS. 
diately after some trading between the natives and the crew 
of an apparently healthy European ship. And the Rev. J. 
Williams, wdio relates this occurrence, remarks that the first 
intercourse between natives and Europeans is invariably 
attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery, or some 
other disease, which carries off numhers of the people. It 
is certainly a fact,” he maintains, which cannot he contro¬ 
verted, 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.” * 
It is curious, hut by no means remarkable, to find among 
these people a great dread of strangers. This is particularly 
the case with the natives of Niue, an island in the Western 
Pacific Ocean, which in former times "vvas named Savage 
Island. It seems this unenviable sobriquet was obtained in 
consequence of their killing every stranger who landed, even 
any of their own countrymen who returned after a length¬ 
ened absence, from their superstitious dread of disease. In 
their intense fear of sickness, they prayed to the dreaded 
sailing gods to avoid their shores, like the Samoans and other 
islanders, wdio, before tasting the cup of ava at evening meal, 
poured out a libation to their various deities, never forgetting 
these especially. Here is ava for you. Oh, sailing gods ! 
do not come ashore at this place, but be pleased to depart 
along the ocean to some other land.” f 
And not without reason do these doomed people pray. 
^^Unfortunately, those interesting islanders disappear more 
rapidly than the darker races. In consequence of their con¬ 
tact with Europeans, certain terrible diseases become almost 
epidemic. Malan, when first occupied by the American 
Mission, had a population of 20,000 ; last year it consisted of 
a miserable remnant of about 1000, or a little more.”J 
The opinion that white people carry about disease with 
them also prevails in Celebes, where Brooke was, on that 
account, prevented from landing.^ 
The belief that the virus carried about by Europeans w^as 
purposely let loose upon the natives—a belief that long pre¬ 
vailed throughout New England—probably arose from the 
circumstance that, after the stranding of a French ship, near 
Cape Cod, there broke out among the Indians, in 1616, a 
destructive pestilence, which so depopulated the coast for a 
* ‘ Narrative of Missionary Enterprise,’ p. 282. 
t Hood, ‘Cruise of the Eawn,’ p. 20. + Ibid., p. 178. 
§ ‘ Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes,’ p. 48. 
