A BOLD-FACED FALSEHOOD.
By Editor
OUR excuse for publishing the following is that the item noted as appearing in the San Jose Gazette of October 10 was syndicate, or plate matter (the credit to which was illegible), and therefore it may have appeared in other journals. The Gazette promptly published our correction, as we expected a fair-minded paper would. If any of our other exchanges have published unwittingly the same report, will they please correct in harmony with the facts set forth below from the San Jose Daily Gazette of October 18:— The following communication has been received by the Gazette from M. C. Wilcox, the editor of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, a religious journal of Oakland:— “I notice in your issue of October 10 the following item: ‘The Pitcairn Islands are having bad times nowadays. Eighteen months ago a party of American Seventh-day Adventists exploited the Society and Paumutu groups, and, in their schooner, the Pitcairn, visited the lonely little island, and converted the people from “hard-cased Christianity” into Seventh-day Adventism. ‘The mission schooner brought dysentery, diphtheria-measles, and influenza, and now comes the news that many of the miserable survivors (about 70) have been attacked with malignant typhoid, to which twelve persons have already succumbed.’ “Kindly give publicity to the following correction of some statements that are found therein: In the sickness alluded to, which occurred more than one year ago, the malady was typhus fever. From this sickness there were twelve deaths in all, the first one occurring on the 26th of August, the last on the 19th of October. “The sickness was not taken to the island by the Adventist schooner, Pitcairn, for the latest call of the Pitcairn previous to this was the middle of February last year. All her passengers and crew at that time were in good health, and the missionary and wife and the teacher which she at that time left at Pitcairn Island were also in good health and did not have the fever at all. In fact, had it not been for them the islanders would have fared badly indeed, because they knew nothing of how to treat such formidable diseases. “The fever was brought there by the crew of the British bark Bowdon, wrecked in the month of April of last year on Oeno reef, some seventy miles from Pitcairn Island. The crew of the Bowdon went to Pitcairn Island, carrying the disease with them to the island. In the month of June of the same year H. M. S. Hyacinth made a short stop at Pitcairn Island. The physician pronounced the cases, at that time, a form of la grippe, but as this was in the beginning of the disease, it was difficult to make a diagnosis. Shortly after that the various cases which were ill took on an aggravated form, and the result, as previously stated, was that twelve died. The diseases mentioned in the item above, with the exception of influenza, have not been on the island so far as I have known, and I have had frequent communication with the islanders in various ways; and the Pitcairn has never taken any of those diseases there. “Instead of being seventy persons on the island, there are one hundred and thirty, all of whom were, when last heard from, within less than a month, in quite good health indeed. One of the natives, a remarkably intelligent lady, writes that the disease would not have been so serious had it not been for the ignorance of the people, and their wrong habits of eating. Although the islanders were much more rugged than the missionaries were naturally, the latter were not attacked with the disease, while the former were, and yet through the whole time of the dread scourge the missionaries were laboring night and day to relieve the sufferers.”