第14章 DEPOPULATION(2)

Here,then,we have one side of the case.Man-eating among kindly men,child-murder among child-lovers,industry in a race the most idle,invention in a race the least progressive,this grim,pagan salvation-army of the brotherhood of Oro,the report of early voyagers,the widespread vestiges of former habitation,and the universal tradition of the islands,all point to the same fact of former crowding and alarm.And to-day we are face to face with the reverse.To-day in the Marquesas,in the Eight Islands of Hawaii,in Mangareva,in Easter Island,we find the same race perishing like flies.Why this change?Or,grant that the coming of the whites,the change of habits,and the introduction of new maladies and vices,fully explain the depopulation,why is that depopulation not universal?The population of Tahiti,after a period of alarming decrease,has again become stationary.I hear of a similar result among some Maori tribes;in many of the Paumotus a slight increase is to be observed;and the Samoans are to-day as healthy and at least as fruitful as before the change.Grant that the Tahitians,the Maoris,and the Paumotuans have become inured to the new conditions;and what are we to make of the Samoans,who have never suffered?

Those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to be ready with solutions.Thus I have heard the mortality of the Maoris attributed to their change of residence -from fortified hill-tops to the low,marshy vicinity of their plantations.How plausible!And yet the Marquesans are dying out in the same houses where their fathers multiplied.Or take opium.The Marquesas and Hawaii are the two groups the most infected with this vice;the population of the one is the most civilised,that of the other by far the most barbarous,of Polynesians;and they are two of those that perish the most rapidly.Here is a strong case against opium.

But let us take unchastity,and we shall find the Marquesas and Hawaii figuring again upon another count.Thus,Samoans are the most chaste of Polynesians,and they are to this day entirely fertile;Marquesans are the most debauched:we have seen how they are perishing;Hawaiians are notoriously lax,and they begin to be dotted among deserts.So here is a case stronger still against unchastity;and here also we have a correction to apply.Whatever the virtues of the Tahitian,neither friend nor enemy dares call him chaste;and yet he seems to have outlived the time of danger.

One last example:syphilis has been plausibly credited with much of the sterility.But the Samoans are,by all accounts,as fruitful as at first;by some accounts more so;and it is not seriously to be argued that the Samoans have escaped syphilis.