Helena the introduction of
scarlet-fever is dreaded as a plague. In some countries foreigners
and natives are as differently affected by certain contagious
disorders as if they had been different animals; of which fact some
instances have occurred in Chile; and according to Humboldt in
Mexico "Political Essay New Spain" volume 4.) It is said that
numbers of their children invariably perish in very early infancy
from the effects of their wandering life; and as the difficulty of
procuring food increases, so must their wandering habits increase;
and hence the population, without any apparent deaths from famine,
is repressed in a manner extremely sudden compared to what happens
in civilised countries, where the father, though in adding to his
labour he may injure himself, does not destroy his offspring.
Besides these 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.
Pages:
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842