Besides The 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,
or some other disease, which carries off numbers of the people."
Again he affirms, "It is certainly a fact, which cannot
be controverted, that most of the diseases which have raged
in the islands during my residence there, have been introduced
by ships; [3] 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."
This statement is not quite so extraordinary as it at first
appears; for several cases are on record of the most malignant
fevers having broken out, although the parties themselves,
who were the cause, were not affected.
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