The following statement speaks for itself.
About the year 1777, Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti
at about two hundred thousand. By a regular census, taken some four
or five years ago, it was found to be only nine thousand. This
amazing decrease not only shows the malignancy of the evils necessary
to produce it; but, from the fact, the inference unavoidably follows
that all the wars, child murders, and other depopulating causes,
alleged to have existed in former times, were nothing in comparison to
them.
These evils, of course, are solely of foreign origin. To say nothing
of the effects of drunkenness, the occasional inroads of the
small-pox, and other things which might be mentioned, it is
sufficient to allude to a virulent disease which now taints the blood
of at least two-thirds of the common people of the island; and, in
some form or other, is transmitted from father to son.
Their first horror and consternation at the earlier ravages of this
scourge were pitiable in the extreme. The very name bestowed upon it
is a combination of all that is horrid and unmentionable to a
civilized being.
