On the Lower Murray and near Lake Alexandrina the blacks have a tradition that some sixty years ago a terrible disease came down the River Murray, and carried off the natives by hundreds. This must have been small-pox, as many of the old people now have their faces pitted who suffered from the disease in childhood. The destruction of life was so great as to seriously diminish the tribes. The natives always represent that before this scourge arrived they were much more numerous. They say that so many died that they could not perform the usual funeral rites for the dead, but were compelled to bury them at once out of the way. Mr. Taplin, who makes these statements, thinks that there must have been more than one visitation of this kind, judging from the age of those who are pock-marked.[1]
Mr. Peter Beveridge says many adults on the Lower Murray are marked with small-pox, which he thinks may have been contracted by the natives in the neighbourhood of Sydney, and passed on from tribe to tribe. The people state that their sufferings from this disease were fearful in the extreme, and that the deaths were so numerous that they could not inter the bodies, but left them where they died, and moved their camps to a new locality. This was repeated, they relate, day after day, until the whole atmosphere was tainted with the decomposing bodies. They thought that not one would escape death, and they had arrived at such a pitch of misery as to be careless whether they died or not. When the hot summer set in, however, the distemper gradually abated; but it was years before they got over the panic. This seems to have been the only great terror that is remembered by them, and the only period they can indicate as one in which great numbers died of the same disease.[2]
Mr. Jno. G. Clapham, of Casterton, states, in a letter to Mr. Nathaniel Munro, to whom I am indebted for much assistance, that in the year 1841 he went to reside on the River Murray, at its entrance into Lake Alexandrina, and he noticed among the different tribes resident on the river and the lake many adults deeply pitted with small-pox. The blacks described to Mr. Clapham the manner of attack and death, and said that the disease came down the river and continued its course along the lake to the sea-coast, carrying off great numbers. They added that the tribes have never recovered the loss of life sustained, but have since remained comparatively few.
In his journey, Sir Thomas Mitchell found nearly everywhere traces of the small-pox; and many of the people of the tribes inhabiting the large area drained by the River Darling were marked with it. He saw pock-marked men on the Bogan, at Fort Bourke, and all along the course of the Darling down to near its junction with the Murray. At Fort Bourke, the marks on the people were not larger than pins' heads—in other places marks of confluent small-pox were seen. The disease had raged amongst them with extraordinary virulence; the people at Fort Bourke at the time of Sir Thomas Mitchell's visit represented only the remnant of a tribe, and it was believed that small-pox had nearly depopulated the Darling. The females were numerous in proportion to the males, and were not secluded by the men, as in other places where they
- ↑ The Narrinyeri, 1874, pp. 32-3
- ↑ The Lower Murray Aborigines, &c., 1861.
