of a Country on its Inhabitants 281 
tries, are rude and ferocious in their difpofitiort 
and manners. The people of Cynetha in, 
Arcadia, who lived in a fituation particularly* 
gloomy and difagreeable, were fo remarkable 
for their unfociable qualities, that they were 
expelled from the Grecian cities. The Cim¬ 
merians, who inhabited a country dark and 
melancholy, fubfifted upon robbery and plunder: 
and the country of the Cyclops, according to 
Homer’s defcription, was fomewhat of a fimilar 
appearance. The fame difpofition, of the peo¬ 
ple inhabiting the fame region, is mentioned 
by Fazellus, a writer concerning Sicily, about 
two hundred years ago, and confirmed, by the 
later teflimony of Mr. Brydone. The Indians 
alfo, dilcovered a few years fince by Mr. Byron, 
in the Southern Hemifphere, were brutal and 
favage to an enormous excefs. 
May we not here fuppofe, with an elegant 
writer, that a ftormy fea, together with a frozen, 
barren and inhofpitable fhore, might work upon 
the imagination of thefe Indians, fo as, by banifk- 
ing all pleafing and benign ideas, to fill them 
with habitual gloom, and with a propenfityf 
to cruelty P And might not the tremendous 
fcenes of Etna have had a like effeft upon the 
* Athensi. Lib. XIV. Polybii. Lib. IV. C. 3. 
+ Harris’s Philolog. Enquiries, p. 518. 
Cyclops, 
