XIX 
DECREASE OF THE ABORIGINES 
463 
European diseases (even the milder ones of which, such as the 
measles, 1 prove very destructive), and to the gradual extinction 
of the wild animals. It is said that numbers of their children 
invariably perish in very early infancy from the effects of their 
wandering life; and as the difficulty of procuring food increases, 
so must their wandering habits increase ; and hence the 
population, without any apparent deaths from famine, is 
repressed in a manner extremely sudden compared to what 
happens in civilised countries, where the father, though in 
adding to his labour he may injure himself, does not destroy 
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 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 archipelago 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 extirpating the weaker. It was melancholy 
at New Zealand to hear the fine energetic natives saying that 
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 that it would have been increased ; for 
infanticide, which formerly prevailed to so extraordinary a 
degree, has ceased, profligacy has greatly diminished, and the 
murderous wars become less frequent. 
The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work, 2 says that 
the first intercourse between natives and Europeans “ is 
invariably attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery, 
1 It is remarkable how the same disease is modified in different climates. At 
the little 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 different animals; of which fact some 
instances have occurred in Chile ; and, according to Humboldt, in Mexico [Polit. 
Essay , New Spain , vol. iv.) 
2 Narrative of Missionary Enterprise , p. 282. 
