Note 58 — Chapter VII

This is not uncommon among savage nations; the introduction of dysentery at Otaheite, or Tahiti, was attributed to Vancouver; and in Beechey’s interesting narrative we are told that the Pitcairn islanders had imbibed similar notions with regard to shipping calling at their island, of leaving them a legacy of some disease. Mr. Hamilton Hume, (the well-known Australian traveller,) who accompanied Captain Sturt in his expedition to the northward, says the natives were suffering severely from this eruptive malady, when they arrived among them, and numbers had died, and many more were still dying, from its virulence. The description of the disease he gave me accords in most points with that given by Dr. Mair.