Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/648

524 LA PEROUSE. Tench's opinion. 1788-91 brought by the French ships, we have not yet attained sufficient knowledge of the [native] language to determine. It never ap* peared on board any of the ships on our passage." If Phillip had been aware of any fact or circumstance poiniing^ to a French origin of the disease, he would not have omitted to mention it ; and it may be assumed that whatever was known on the subject at that time was known to him. How the French came to be mixed up in the matter at all may be seen in the following passage from Tench (Complete Account, page 18), where the idea appears in the shape of a query : — No solution of this difficulty had been given when I left the country, in December, 1791. I can, therefore, only propose queries for the ingenuity of others to exercise itself upon. Is it a disease indigenous to the countiy 7 Did the French ships under Monsieur de Peyrouse introduce it 1 Let it be remembered that they now had been departed more than a year; and we had never heard of its existence on board them. Had it travelled across the continent from its western shore, where Dampier and other European voyagexs had formerly landed 1 Was it introduced by Mr. Cook 1 Did we give it birth here 1 No person among us had been affiicted with the disorder since we had quitted the Cape of Good Hope, seven- teen months before. It is true that our surgeons had brought out variolous matter in bottles; but to infer that it was produced from this cause were a supposition so wild as to be unworthy of con- sideration. The most probable of these suppositions is that it was "indigenous A native to the Country" — or rather, that it was a disease which originated among the natives, as a natural result of their habits of lifa 8ome confirmation of this theory may be found in the fact that it has been observed under circumstances which clearly repudiate a French origin. Major Mitchell, for instance, found it among the natives whom he met with after crossing the Liverpool Range in 1831 :— We reached, at length, a watercourse, called by the natives Mitchell. Currung&i, and encamped upon its banks beside the tribe from Dartbrook, which had crossed the range before us, apparently to join some of their tribe who lay extremely ill at this place, being afiTected with a virulent kind of small-pox. We found the helpless creatures stretched on their backs beside the water, under the shade of the wattle or mimosa trees, to avoid the intense heat of the sun. We gave them from our stock some medicine ; and the wretched sufferers seemed to place the utmost confidence in its efficacy. Three Expeditions, p. 26. Digitized by Google