MEASLY BEASH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12488, 29 November 1918, Page 6

MEASLY BEASH.

A TRAGEDY OF THE EARLY DAYS. (By \AOBKIS.U, in “ Otago Daily Timas. ”) .A way south on 1 lie Otago const, lialfway between tins grandeur of those gloat, headlands, Cape Sounders and Iho Nuggets, lies Quoin Point. Smith of Quoin Point stretches a rugged, rockIjouikl seaboard, mile beyond mile—the, Akatoro coast. Still further smith, Cook’s Rock stands sentinel, as it stood long years ago, when Cook first noted its strnngo appearance from the dock of the Itndeavour. iSouth again, and just north of the great clay cliffs beneath which gleaming black’among the sand at low lido lie the Knitangata coal seams, lies a stretch of windtossed sand dunes, covered to seaward witli coarse red sand grass and overgrow n in its sheltered hollows with tussocks and dwarf flax. This is Measly Beach. Behind these sand dimes lies a sheltered, sand-hound lagoon, the outlet to the AVangaloa Stream. Behind was enacted a tragedy the tragedy of Measly Beach. And this, as it was told to me, is the story Long years ago, before there was _ any law in tho 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 ifsted for one night at a small coastal settlement near Invercargill. Here the chief nought some bine blankets from a whaling trader recently returned from Sydney. One detail the trader omitted to toll his customers; a short time before a Maori girl bad 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 groat bay into which the Molyneux River throws its swirling waters, and hero Maori after Maori was seized with cruel headache, and before the sheltered beach just north of the Wangaloa cliff could bo reached many wore delirious. There was nothin.tr for it but hurriedly to beach 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 aclded to the number who were sickening. Some, in naked madness, rushed into the stream, where they sat neck deep, to obtain the relief the cooling water afforded ; others lay, in all attitudes, huddled together in the shelter 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 loft alive. Fortunately, as the end approached and the breathing became heavier, pain ceased. Only comparatively row made progress towards recovery, and many of those, starting too soon in search of mussels and flax root to relievo their growing hunger, brought on a return of the hacking cough, doubly fatal in a relapse to the Native constitution It was n small handful, indeed, that after many days returned to tell the tale. Little wonder that Measly Bench, peopled by the grim ghosts of those tortured warriors, is tapu, tapu for-ever and ever. "What, a hopeless 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 were in high fever, and required that relief which a cooling perspiration gives ; no nurse to paint iodine on sore chest or to see that cough sedatives were taken in sufficient strength and frequency to ensure sleep and the early cheeking of hacking coughs; and. later still, no kindly neighbours to bring food so that the convalescent’s hunger might be appeased with a proper and suitable nourishment, i

And now, after many days, from end to end of the North Island, in the Native settlements scattered and hard to reach, and often, too, in those adjoining the towns, history is repeating itself. Daily I am , visiting among the Natives and seeing the tragedy of Measly Beach again and again le-acted. The doctors, the Health authorities and the voluntary unskilled workers are 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 bo seen, are no more afraid than the pakohas, but one does come upon cases _where the neighbours of sufferers are either too afraid or too indifferent to seek aid for the sick or to send invalid food to the convalescent.

In a little settlement closely adjoining a European village I found one young woman, the mother of six children, had just died, and that two other young 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 eleven 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 and detail, is this scourge working sad havoc in so many settlements. There is no time now to stand on ceremony; I know of one helper who, having used all ihe prescribed medicine available, gave teaspoonfuls of weak chlorodvuo and whisky to the cough-racked iVativcs. The result was rest and sleep. The Maoris being freed from pain, thought themselves better, and, what is more, did get better. The coughing can be, and especially at night, should be stopped' Now to adorn my tale. This is no time to leave to others anything that we 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 Beach. Now, too, is the time to give our moaov froelvj to let slide things that just now don’t count and to give our time to what does matter—tho lessening of pain and the saving of human life. Soon we shall all be busy, congratulating ourselves on what wo have done—forgetting what wo have left undone.

Never in history, least of all to-day sympathetic thought “cut any ice.” We must turn our thought into action, “right action, right away.”