I

John Williams, it will have been seen, introduced into Samoa not only the "Word" but also the influenza. In a book entitled Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before, by the Rev. George Turner—himself a member of the London Mission—I find the following passage:

"Influenza is a new disease to the natives. They say that the first attack of it ever known in Samoa was during the Aana War in 1830, just as the missionaries, Williams and Barff, with Tahitian teachers, first reached their shores. The natives at once traced the disease to the foreigners and the new religion; the same opinion spread through these seas, and especially among the islands of the New Hebrides. Ever since then there have been returns of the disease almost annually."