HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17484, 28 November 1918, Page 5

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.

tite story of measly beach.

(By Worker.) Away south on the Otago coast, halfway between the grandeur of those great headlands, Capo Saunders and The Nuggets, lies Quoin Point. South of Quoin J. oint stretches a rugged, vock-bound seaward, milo beyond mile—the Akatoro coast. Still further south, Cook's Rock stands sentinel, as it stood long years ago when. Cook first noted its strange appearance from the deck of the Endeavour. South again, and just north of the great clay cliffs beneath which gleaming black among- the sand at low tide lie tho Kaitangata coal seams, lies a stretch of wLndtossed sand dunes, covered to seaward with coarso red sand grass and overgrown in its sheltered hollows with tussocks and dwarf flax. This is Measly Beach. Behind these sand dunes lies a sheltered sandbound lagoon, the outlet to the .Wangaloa Stream. Behind was enacted a tragedy— the tragedy of Measly Beach. .And this, as it was told to me, is tho story : Long years ago, before there was auy law in the land save that of might, when the only leavening of civilisation filtered, tainted and distorted, through a few pakeha sailors, deserters mostly from passing whalers, a fleet of canoes, manned by Maori warriors, was returning' northwards. A few days previously it had rested for ono night at a small coastal settlement near Invercargill. Here the chief bought some blue blankets from a whaling trader recently returned from Sydney. One detail the trader omitted to tell his customers: 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 °™oes passed across tho great bay into which tho Molyneux River throws its swirling waters, and here Maori after Maori was seized with cruel headache, and, before tho sheltered beach just. north of tho Wangaloa cliff could be reached, many wero delirious. There was nothing for it but hurriedly to bcach the canoes and to set up wind screens in the sheltered hollows beside the Wangaloa Stream. Next morning the first patients were much worse, many of them delirious, and each hour added to the' number who were sickening. Some in naked madness rushed into tho stream, where they sat neck deep to obtain tho relief tho cooling water afforded; others lay, in all attitudes, huddled together in the snelter of the flax bushes of raupo screen. After a day or two the lung trouble came; great powerful men lay coughing themselves into pneumonia, each cough piercing their sides like a knife. Others, coughing with like violence, brought on great gushes of crimson hemorrhage. 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 those starting too soon in search of mussels and flax root to relieve their growing hunger, brought on a return of the hacking cough, doubly fatal in a relapse to the Native constitution. It was a small handful, indeed', that after many days, returned to tell the tele Little wonder that Measly Beach, peopled by the grim ghosts of those tortured warriors, is tapu, tapu for ever and ever.

What a hopeles tragedy*! No willing helpers 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 the system; no qualified, doctor to prescribe fever powders no aspirin and no quinine when the patients W t r -V n ° V? VGr > ancl required that relief which a oooling perspiration gives; no nurSe to paint iodine' on sore chest or to Se< L -• at cou S h sedatives were taken in suthcient strength and frequency to ensure sleep and the early checking of hacking coughs ard, later still, no kindly neighbours to bring .food so that the convalescent s hunger might be appeased with a proper and suitable nourishment. And now after many days, from end to end of the North Island, in the Native settlements scattered and hard to reach, ana often, too, in those adjoining the history is repeating itself. Daily I am visiting among the Natives and seeing the_ tragedy of Measly Beach and again reacted. The doctors, the health authorities, and the voluntary unskilled workers aro doing excellent work. But with so many of the workers down themselves, with the hospitals filled with pakeha cases, what" chance have the Natives? Often none ; often help when it is days and days too late. The Maoris, as far as can be seen, arc no more afraid than the pakehas, but one does come upon cases where the neighbours of sufferers are either too afraid or too indifferent to seek aid for the sicker to send invalid food to the convalescent. In a little settlement closely adjoining a European village I found'that one youn* woman, the mother of six children, had jutt died, and that two other vounor mothers were suffering, the one " from double pneumonia and the other from congestion of the lungs and hemorrhage. In a back room crouched a Native grandmother sickening herself, in sole charge of 11 coughing and moaning children. There was no one even to take me from room | to room, but the sick husband of the dead woman. '

And in this manner, varying in differing degrees <uxl detail, is this scourge working sad havoc in so many settlements. Iherc is no time now to stand on cere1710n.y 'know of one helper who, having used all tho prescribed medicine available gave tcaspoonfuls of weak cholorodyne and whisky to cough-racked Natives. TV result was rest and sleep. The Maoris, being freed from pain, thought themselves better, and. what is more, did get better. Jno coughing can be and, especiallv at night, should be stooped. Now to adorn my tale. This is no time to leave to others anything- that we can do ourselves. Whcrre no skilled workers are available, let us see at least that the Natives wrthin a mile of us do not lack what tho Nntives lacked at Measly Beach Now, too, js the time to give our money freely; to let slide things that just now don t count and to give our time to what does matter—tho lessenintr of pain and the saving of human life. Soon wo shall all be busy, congratulating ourselves on what we have done—to use, too, forgetting what wo have left undone.

Never in history, least of all to-dav, has sympathetic thought "cut any ice" We must turn our thought into action, '"ricrht action, right awuy."