were more in demand. On a little hill, on the banks of the Lower Darling, Sir Thomas saw three large tombs, of an oval shape, and in length about twelve feet. Each stood in the centre of an artificial hollow, the mound or tomb in the middle being about five feet high, and on each of them were piled numerous withered branches and limbs of trees, no inappropriate emblems of mortality. These tombs, Sir Thomas believed, covered the remains of the tribe swept off by small-pox—the marks of which were left on all that remained alive.[1]
Collins states that small-pox killed great numbers of the natives shortly after the settlemeut was formed in New South Wales [1788]. Numerous dead bodies were found in excavations of the rocks, or lying upon the beaches and points of the different coves. Many families had been swept off. Whether it had ever appeared before could not be ascertained, but the name they gave it—gal-gal-la—indicated a previous acquaintance with it.[2] The name given to this disease at Raffles Bay is, according to Dr. Wilson, Oie-boir.
I have been thus particular in collecting information respecting the ravages of the small-pox, because it shows in what manner the numbers of the native race have been reduced in consequence of the introduction by the whites of one contagious disease. Other diseases have been brought by the white man which have killed many thousands; but this terrible malady, so frightful in its effects whether the sufferer lived or died, and so potent in causing destruction, struck the natives with terror. The mother beheld her children dead or disfigured; the husband saw his wife, if she lived, with a body that was the more loathsome because it recalled every day and every time he looked upon her the horrors through which his tribe had passed. Their graves were multiplied in numbers until at last the dead were so many that graves could not be provided for them; and the bodies were left on the banks of rivers, on the sands of the coast, and in the depths of the forest, to rot or be eaten by the dogs. Nothing can be imagined more likely to dispirit a people, to drive them to despair, and to cause them to lose all hope, than such a visitation as that which struck down the natives during the period immediately subsequent to the formation of the settlement at Point Maskeleyne. That it was introduced by the whites is certain, though none of the colonists that accompanied Governor Phillip appear to have suffered from it.
"In the month of April 1789," says Bennett, "the dead bodies of numbers of natives were seen in the bush, and in various places about the shores of the harbour; and others were found in a dying condition from a disease which they called gal-gal-la. The Governor, thinking this a favorable opportunity to conciliate and again open friendly relations with them, ordered two sick children and a man who was found nursing them under a rock in the harbour to be brought to the camp. The medical officers at once pronounced the disease to be small-pox. The presence amongst the Aborigines of that dreadful scourge was considered exceedingly remarkable, seeing that it could not have been communicated to them by the whites, having never made its appearance among
- ↑ Eastern Australia, 1838, vol. I., pp. 216, 255, 259, 260, 304.
- ↑ The English Colony in New South Wales, 1804, p. 58.
