98 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



man who was feveral weeks aboard a fhip with nine favages, 

 picked up from an illand in the South Sea, who would not tafte a 

 drop of our ftrong liquors *. And Mr Graham, the gentleman that 

 I h.ive fo often mentioned, informs me, that the Efquimaux, though 

 they trafBck a good deal with us, have not yet learned from us to 

 drink brandy, but rejcd: it when offered to them. Yet there are 

 many among us, who believe that, without the ufe of fpirits, it is 

 impoffible to live in fuch a climate as theirs. 



There is a ftory told by William Funnel, an Englifli navigator, 

 in the account of his voyage to the South Sea, in 1705, which fhows 

 liow violent and unnatural the effedt of fpirits is upon thofe who 

 have not been accuftomed to drink them. He fays that he touched at 

 Pagon, one of the Ladrone or Marianne iflands, where, as I have 

 faid, the men are above feven feet high, and broad and ftrong in 

 proportion. Some of them came aboard his fhip, to whom he of- 

 fered fpirits, of which they would not accept, being, as he fays, a- 

 fraid of them ; but, feeing our people drink them fo freely, one of 

 them, bolder than the reft, made figns that he would drink with 

 them. Upon this they gave him a glafs of brandy, which he fwal- 

 lowed. It was no fooner down his throat, than he began to gafp 

 for breath ; and continued gaping fo long, that, our author fays, they 

 thought he would never fliut his mouth ; at the fame time, making 

 fjgns that he had fwallowed fire, and that his ftomach was burnt. 

 Then he lay down upon the deck, and roared like a bull, fo that 

 fome of his countrymen ran away in a fright. At laft, he fell into 



a 



* His name was Scot. He was aboard the Warwick Eaft Indiaman, •which, in the end ' 

 of the laft war, by taking a round about way homeward, in order to avoid the French 

 privateers, fell in with an unknown ifland in the South Sea, from whence they got thofe 

 nine favages ; one of whom died aboard the fhip, and the other eight made their efcape. 

 i have in writing a particular account of the whole affair, in which there are fundry things 

 of curiofity ; but they do not belong to the fubjet^ vre are now upon. 



