Page:Australian race - vol 1.djvu/280

DISEASES AND DECLINE. 219 So far, I have spoken of small-pox in the south-eastern and southern portion of the continent; its first appearance, as far as is known, at Sydney, in 1789; its presence near Bathurst in 1830 or 1831, and in Victoria as late as 1845; and of the five survivors marked with it, recorded in the census of 1877; and of other circumstances. Besides this, however, the small-pox has prevailed largely in Western and Northern Australia. The facts which I have been able to collect concerning it in those parts are as follow:—

Wilson, in his Voyage Round the World (in 1828, published in 1835), gives a vocabulary of the Raffles Bay tribe, in which the word oie or boie appears as the translation of small-pox. From more than one source we learn that, in 1829, when the first settlement at Perth, Western Australia, was made, many of the Blacks in the locality were pitted with small-pox. In Western Australia: its History, Progress, &c., by W. H. Knight, published in 1870, there is an extract from a report of Staff-Surgeon H. H. Jones, in a note to which he says:—"Measles, in a somewhat severe form, has been introduced into the colony, but it seems now to have entirely disappeared, and small-pox has made its appearance amongst the native tribes in the far north, but it has not spread amongst the White people with whom they mix."

In 1878 and 1879, I corresponded with Mr. John Perks, of Cheangua Station (which I am informed is about 200 miles north-by-east of Champion Bay), who kindly exerted himself to give me what information he was able on the subject of small-pox amongst the Blacks. Acting on his suggestion, I examined the Western Australian Almanac, printed at Perth by Stirling and Sons, and in the Chronicle for the month of May 1869 found the following entry:—"Small-pox prevalent amongst the natives of Champion Bay district." Also in the Chronicle for March 1870:—"Small-pox attacked Mr. Hooley's family at Nickol Bay, but without any fatal results."