SAMOA AND EPIDEMIC

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 108, 31 January 1919, Page 3

SAMOA AND EPIDEMIC

ONE-FIFTH OF' POPULATION DIE. . What havoc the epidemic played with the population of Samoa has not yet been categorically stated. It is related by one who was there, and who went down with the disease, that th'.tuliil number of deaths was between 9000 and 10,000 in the whole of the group. In several instances whole villages were wiped out, Some which wore visited when time and opportunity .perim»»?d were found to ba veritable cliiiriiol iixises, end in ol.Ws only a few infants were left alive. The number of white civilians who died wae 27, in addition to which nine of the New Zealand garrison succumbed. Among tlit victims were the whole of the well-known Nelson family, with the one exception of Mr. Noel Nelson. Mr. Jimmy -Ah Sue, the proprietor and editor of the "Samoa Times," died of the disease. As thev knew next to nothing nbont the fell disease, and no means, were available for combating it, the epidemic just had to take its course in the case of the natives. In Africa good work was done by the garrison with the limited means at their disposal. Theirs wns by no means an enviable 'task. The burial of the dead was in itself an exhausting business, us they 'had to bo interred in a vast trench, which had to bo dug and filled in under a tropical sun without an atom of shade to temper tho heat. Tho natives wore seized with tho idea that tho British had introduced the epidemic for tho destruction of the race, and so intense was the fear of the Samonil chiefs that they pit a promise from Colonel Logan that if the Talnno did arrive from New Zealrid there was to be no communication \:hh the shore. The epidemic went rk'ht through thn 'grniip. Over 5000 deaths were recorded at Savaii. The total deaths was equivalent to oiio-fiflli of the population.