Frightful Plague in Fiji.
FURTHER information from Fiji conveys still darker accounts of the plague which has recently passed over the new colony. A resident of long standing, writing to a Victorian contemporary, says: “The death rate is not yet made up, but the probability is that 40,000 Fijians died during the four months’ plague. The native population of Fiji is now about one-third only of what it was when I landed here twenty-five years ago.” The accounts given of the magnitude of the disaster are less harrowing than those of the sufferings of the victims. “Very few died of the measles, the majority dying of subsequent disease in the form of dysentery, congestion of the lungs, etc. Want of nourishment or starvation carried off thousands.” We are told that “all work was suspended for two months. You could pass through whole towns without meeting any one in the streets, which were soon completely covered with grass. Entering a house you would find men, women, and children, all lying down indiscriminately, some just attacked, some still in agony, and others dying. Some who were strong enough attempted suicide, and not always unsuccessfully.” We are further told that “as the scourge became more permanent four or five were buried together in one grave, and generally without religious service. In some cases the dead were buried under the earthen floors of the houses; in others, just outside the house. The burials were hurried, and the probability is that some were buried alive. In many instances the husband, wife and children, all died. In one village all the women died, and in another all the men.” It is interesting to read of the different mental effects produced by the torture of disease. It is not surprising to find that “some made fruitless appeals to their ancient god. Some inland tribes, who had only recently embraced Christianity, considered that the disease was conveyed by their religious teachers, and they dismissed them, and then abandoned their new religion. Among these, some were for killing the teacher’s wife and child, whose husband and father had died of the plague, to stop infection.” But while some in their distress fell back on their former superstitions, the greater number are said to have borne their calamity with fortitude, and to have suffered and died under the influence of Christianity.—Sidney (Australia) Herald.