152 cook's FIRST VOYAGE JULY, 



the morning, and scattered about them lay some 

 shells of a kind of clamm, and some fragments of 

 roots, the refuse of the meal. After regretting their 

 disappointment, they repaired to their quarters, which 

 was a broad sand-bank, under the shelter of a bush. 

 Their beds were plantain leaves, which they spread 

 upon the sand, and which were as soft as a mattress; 

 their cloaks served them for bed-clothes, and some 

 bunches of grass for pillows : with these accommo- 

 dations they hoped to pass a better night than the 

 last, especially as, to their great comfort, not a mus- 

 quito was to be seen. Here then they lay down, and, 

 such is the force of habit, they resigned themselves 

 to sleep, without once reflecting upon the probabi- 

 lity and danger of being found by the Indians in that 

 situation. If this appears strange, let us for a moment 

 reflect, that every danger, and every calamity, after 

 a time, becomes familiar, and loses its effect upon the 

 mind. If it were possible that a man should first be 

 made acquainted with his mortality, or even with the 

 inevitable debility and infirmities of old age, when 

 his understanding had arrived at its full strength, and 

 life was endeared by the enjoyments of youth, and 

 vigour, and health, with what an agony of terror and 

 distress would the intelligence be received? yet, 

 being gradually acquainted with these mournful 

 truths, by insensible degrees, we scarce know when, 

 they lose all their force, and we think no more of the 

 approach of old age and death, than these wanderers 

 of an unknown desert did of a less obvious and cer- 

 tain evil, the approach of the native savages, at a 

 time when they must have fallen an easy prey to 

 their malice or their fears. And it is remarkable, 

 that the greater part of those who have been con- 

 demned to suffer a violent death, have slept the night 

 immediately preceding their execution, though there 

 is perhaps no instance of a person accused of a capi- 

 tal crime having slept the first night of his confine- 

 ment. Thus is the evil of life in some degree a re- 





