[Footnote 90: Official Journal of Government Agent on _Lord of the Isles_, 1882.] [Footnote 91: _Text-book of Pathological Anatomy and Pathogenesis_ (English edition). London, 1885.] [Footnote 92: Letter from Dr. William Gunn, Presbyterian missionary at Futuna, dated September 14, 1893.] [Footnote 93: Parliamentary Paper C. 634, and _Transactions of the Epidemiological Society of London_, N.S., Vol. iii, 1884.] [Footnote 94: _Nineteen Years in Polynesia._] CHAPTER XVII LEPROSY (_Vukavuka_ or _Sakuka_)[95] No less than one per cent. of the native population of Fiji are lepers, and, if native tradition is to be believed, the decay of customary law has not affected the people in this respect either for better or for worse. All the old men are familiar with the disease; they can diagnose it with surprising accuracy; and they generally concur in stating that it has neither spread nor decreased since heathen times. The history of leprosy in the Pacific is remarkable. The Maoris have had the disease ever since their arrival in New Zealand--certainly not less than four centuries ago;[96] with the Fijians it is ancient enough to have taken its place in their mythology. In Hawaii, on the other hand, it seems to have been unknown before 1848, in New Caledonia before 1865, and in the Loyalty Group before 1882.[97] It is impossible to speak with certainty about the other groups, because the early voyagers did not stay long enough to make accurate observations, and were prone to mistake the disfigurements of scrofula and syphilis for the symptoms of leprosy; the naval surgeons of the last century were generally men of inferior attainments; and the missionaries, traders, and runaway sailors who had the opportunity for leaving valuable information regarding native diseases did not possess the necessary medical knowledge. Moerenhout, who wrote in 1837, is the first to make undeniable reference to it. In enumerating the diseases of the Society Islanders, he gives an excellent description of the symptoms of leprosy under the native name _Hobi_, which is identical with _Supe_[98] (H and B being interchangeable with S and P), the Samoan term for leprosy, without a suspicion of the real nature of the disease he was describing. It may, therefore, be assumed that leprosy was endemic in Tahiti and the adjacent islands long before the arrival of Europeans. Native tradition seems to indicate that it was so in Tonga, and its history in islands into which it has been recently introduced suggests that it was not a recent arrival in any of the Polynesian groups except Hawaii. For, whereas in Tahiti, New Zealand and Fiji it is no commoner now than it was a century ago, in Hawaii it has increased so rapidly that in forty years after its introduction it had infected one in every thirty of the native population; in New Caledonia in twenty years it had infected 4000; and in the Loyalty Islands six years of the disease in Mare alone had produced seventy lepers.