HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 56, 30 November 1918, Page 3

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

« — : ;. ""THE TRAGEDY OF MEASLY BEACH (Communicated by "'Worker.") Away south on the Otago coast; halfway between the grahdeuv of those great headlands, Cape Haunders and Tlie JS Tnggeis, lies Quoin Point; south of Quoin Point slretclies a rugged, rock-bound seaboard, milo beyond mile, the Akatoro const. Still further south, Coolc'b Hock stands sentinel as it stood years ago when Cook noted its strange ajpearance from the deck of the Endeavour. South again, and just north of the high clay cliffs which overlie the Knitanjjntn coiil sDiiins, lies a stretch of wind-tossed sand-dunes, covered to seaward with coarse red sandgrass and overgrown in its sheltered hollows with tussocks and dwarf flax. This is Mensly Bench. Behind these sand-dunes lies a sheltered sand-bound lagoon, the outlet to the Wangaloa Stream. And now comes a tragedy, the tragedy of Italy Beach. Here, as it was told to me, is the story: Long years ago, before there was any law in the lnml, save that of might, when tho only leavening of civilisation filtered tainted and distorted through a few pakelin sailors, deserters mostly from passing whalers, a fleet of canoes inannod by Maori warriors was returning northwards. A few days previously it had rested for one night at a small coastal settlement near Invercargill. Hero the chiefs bought some blue blankete from a whaling trader recently returned from Sydney. One detail (ho trader omitted to tell his customers: a .short time before a Maori girl had died of measles between those very blankets, perhaps the first victim to that disease in New Zealand. Paddling on homewards the coasting canoes passed across the great bay into which the Molyneaux lUver throws its swirling waters, hero Maori after Maori was seized with cruel headaches, and, before the sheltered beach just north of the Wangaloa cliff could be reached, many were delirious. There was nothing for it, but to teach the canoes' and to set up hurried windscreens in the sholtered hollows beside the Wangaloa Stream. Next morning Hie first patients were much worse, many of them delirious, and each hour added to the number who wore sickening. Some in naked madness rushed into tho stream where, they sat nockdeep to obtain the relief the cooling water offered;'others lay, in all attitudes, huddled together in the shelter of the flox bushes or raupo screens. After a day or two enmo lung trouble; groat powerful men lay coughing themselves into pneumonia, each cough piercing their sides like a knife. ' Others coughing with like violence, brought on floods of crimson haemorrhage. Soon, few were left alive." Fortunately, as the end approached and the breathing became heavier, pain ceased. Only comparatively few-made progress towards recovery, and 'many of these starting too 6oon in search of niusspls and flax-root to relievo their growing hunger, brought on a return of tho hacking cough,- doubly fatal in a relapse to the Native constitution. It was a small handful indeed that, after many days, returned -to tell tho talc. Little wonder that Measly Beach, peopled by the grim ghosts of these -tortured warriors, is tapu, lapu. for ever and ever.

What n hopeless tragedy! No willing helper to tell the Natives in good time that measles, like influenza, often brings on constipation; that unaided the constipated patient lies for days chocked with fermenting waste which poisons tho system; no qualified doctor to'prescribe ievor powders, aspirin, or quinine when the patients' were in high fever and required, tlie relief which a cooling perspiration gives. No nur.=e to paint iodine on soro chests or see that cough sedatives were taken in sufficient strength and frequency to ensure sleep and the early checking, of hacking coughs; and later still no kindly neighbours bringing food so that the convalescent's hunger was appeased with proper and suitablo nourishment.

And no.ir, after many days, from end' to end ot tho North Island, in the Native settlements scattered and hard to roach, often, too, in those adjoining the towns, history is repeating itself. Daily I am visiting among the Natives and seeing tho .tragedy of Measly Bench again mid again reacted. The doctors the Health authorities, and the voluntary unskilled workers aru doing excellent work. But with so many of the workers down themselves, with the hospitals llled with pakeha cases, what chance have the Natives? Often none; often only help when ,it is days and days too late. lho Maoris, as far as can bo seen, are no more afraid- than tho pakehas, but one does come upon cases where the .neighbours of sufferers are either too afraid or too indifferent to seek aid for tho sick or to send invalid loncl to tho convalescent.

. In a little settlement closely adjoining a European village I found one young woman, the mother of six children, had just diod, and that two other young mothers were suffering, the one from double pneumonia and the other from congestion of tlie lungs and haemorrhage. In a back room crouched a Native grandmother, sickening herself, in sole charge of eleven coughing or moanin? children, ■there was at the time no one but the sick husband of the dead woman to take me from room to room. '

Ant! in this manner, varying onlv in fletails and degrees, is this scourge working sad havoc in the Maori settlements, lliis is no time to stand i on ceremony. n l? w of 0,,e . hel P er w . ,,0 > liavinp used all the prescribed medicine available, gave teaspoonfnls of wp.ak chlorodyne and whisky to cough-racked Natives. The result was rest and sleep. The Maoris, being freed from pain, thought themselves bettor, and, what is more, did "et butter, riie coughing can . be stopped, and especially at night it should'be the first care.

-Now to adorn my tale. We must not leave to others anything that wo can do ourselves. Where no skilled workers are available, let us see at least that the Natives within a mile of us do not lack what the Natives lacked at Measly Uencli. Aow is the time to give ou'r money freely; to let slide- tilings that just now do hot count and to give our time to what does matter—the lessening of pain and the saving of human life, noon we shall all be busy congi'4|ilating ourselves on what wo 'have done—and forgetting what wo have left undone. Never in history, least ))f all to-dny, lias sympathetic thought "cut any ice'" We must turn our thoughts into action— 'right action, right away."