group since 1820, but none of these approached in importance the terrible visitation of measles in 1875.[93] The measles were introduced by H.M.S. Dido in the persons of Rata Timothe, the Vunivalu's son, and his servant returning from Sydney, and was communicated to the members of a great native meeting that had assembled in Lavuka to welcome the Dido. They scattered to their own homes with the seeds of the disease upon them and spread it broadcast through the country. The people at that time numbered about 150,000, and it is recorded, probably with fair exactitude, that 40,000 persons died from measles, and the famine and dysentery that followed, within the space of four months. The great mortality was due partly to the suddenness with which the infection spread. Unprotected by any previous attack, every person was susceptible to infection; whole communities were stricken down at the same time, there was no one left to procure food and water, to attend to the necessities of the sick, or even in many cases to bury the dead. Many, therefore, died of starvation and neglect, of disregard of the simplest nursing precautions, of apathy and despair. They became what is so well expressed by their own word "tankaya" overwhelmed, dismayed, cowed—incapable of any effort to save even their own lives. So deep an impression did the measles leave upon the race that it has become their principal date mark; whether it left behind it physical effects in lowering the stamina of the survivors is a matter for conjecture.
Since the measles the principal foreign epidemics to which the natives have been exposed are whooping-cough in 1884, 1890, 1891; dengue, 1885; cerebro-spinal meningitis, 1885; influenza, 1891-2.
Of these whooping-cough has proved the most fatal, being now permanently domiciled in the colony. It appeared in Samoa in 1849, but eventually died out there.[94] It is worth recording that in 1893 the measles reached Samoa and Tonga
from New Zealand, and destroyed nearly one-twentieth of the Tongan population; but although the disease was raging in every port from which steamers sailed for Fiji, the Government succeeded in preventing it from being communicated to those on shore by a rigid system of quarantine.
BLIGHTING INFLUENCE OF FOREIGNERS
Many Fijians believe that the white race always brings death to coloured people, saying that they have heard it from Europeans. When the Commission on the native decrease was sitting in August, 1893, I received from a native of Thithia the following letter, accompanied by a rude sketch of a Fijian grasping a Bible and retreating before a European from whose body were drawn a series of radiations to indicate his pernicious influence.
Translation.
"The decrease of the natives.
"I wish, sir, to make a few remarks. There has been much consideration and discussion on this matter. There appears to me to be only one reason for the decrease of the natives: it is the white chiefs living among us. It is this:—
"(1) They blight us—they are blighting us, the natives, and we are withering away. It is not possible for a chief to live with his inferiors, to wear the same clothes, to use the same mat or the same pillow. In a few days the neck or the belly of the low-born man will swell up and he will die; his chief has blighted him. It is so with the white chiefs and us the natives. If we live near them for long, we, the natives, will be completely swept away.
"(2) They are great and we are insignificant. A plant cannot grow up under the great Ivi tree, for the great Ivi overshadows it, and the grass or plant beneath withers away. It is thus with the chiefs from the great lands who live among us. This is the reason why we Fijians are decreasing. 'Let us move gently: we stand in the glare of the light' (Fijian proverb): let us practice religion."
"Josefa Sokovangone."
Such a belief must naturally be accompanied by bitter feelings, and for Europeans to foster this belief is cruel, and not devoid of danger for the future. There is proof enough that the first contact of voyagers with indigenous people or peoples who have been isolated for generations is fraught with danger for the latter, and it is natural enough that even without such promptings the Fijians should blame the Europeans of the present day for the harm that has resulted from
the introduction of foreign epidemics; but to remind them of this, as some Europeans are fond of doing, is not only to afford them an excuse for neglecting all efforts of sanitary reform, but to give them justification for feeling a resentment that may some day take the form of reprisals.