Not a living soul remaining; all swept away by pestilence; huts
recently fallen to decay, fruits ripening, on the trees, and no
hand left to gather them; the shaddock and the lime falling to
the earth to be preyed upon by the worm, like their former
masters. All dead; not one left to tell the miserable tale.
The decay of the population is still progressing, and the next
fifty years will see whole districts left uninhabited unless
something can be done to prevent it. There is little doubt that
if land and water could be obtained from government in a
comparatively healthy and populous neighborhood, many would
migrate to that point from the half-deserted districts, who might
assist in the cultivation of the country instead of rotting in a
closing jungle.
One season of pestilence, even in a large village, paves the road
for a similar visitation in the succeeding year, for this reason:
Say that a village comprising two hundred men is reduced by
sickness to a population of one hundred. The remaining one
hundred cannot keep in cultivation the land formerly open;
therefore, the jungle closes over the surface and rapidly
encroaches upon the village.
