9'3 A N T I E N T M E 1^ A P H Y S I C S. Book L 



well as liitelled and fcience ; fo that, like thefe, it lyes latent in 

 him till it be produced by certain circumftances and fituations of 

 life. It is from their moft intemperate and unnatural fle(h diet, 

 without any mixture of vegetables, as we ufe It, and joined with 

 their drunkennefs, that thefe barbarous Indians are more difeafed 

 than any other barbarians we hear of: For even the common flefh 

 eliet, though ufed with moderation and without flrong liquors, not 

 being natural to man, produces difeafes, and fhortens life, as is evi- 

 dent from the long lives of the Antedeluvian Patriarchs, who ate no 

 fleih, and 1 think is evident from our own experience of men, who, 

 having loft their health by intemperance, the flelh diet and the ufe 

 of flrong liquors, have recovered it by the vegetable diet and drink- 

 ino- water. Now, what will recover health when loft, will much 

 more preferve it before it be loft. With refpedl to the difeafes of thefe 

 Indians, I will only further obferve, that nothing endeared their Mif- 

 fionaries more to them, than their attendance upon them when they 

 were dying, and their adminiftering all the rites of their Church to 

 give them comfort, and eafe of mind, in their laft moments.— And 

 thus 1 think I have accounted for the favage difpofitions of the Indians 

 before they were tamed by^the Jefuits, and for their want of health. 



What I have faid here, of the brutality and mifery of thofe In- 

 dians, may appear contradi£tory to the account I have given of the 

 inhabitants of the Pelew Iflands and the New Zealanders * : But it 

 fliould be confidered, that the men of the Pelew Iflands do not live 

 by hunting, as thofe Indians do, but upon the fruits of the earth, 

 and what fiHi they can catch, eating no flefh, except that of fome 

 birds which they may happen to kill, and having no ufe of ftrong 

 liquors ; and they have a very regular and orderly government, as 

 I have fhown t* And, as to the New Zealanders, they have no 

 four footed beafts in their Ifland; therefore they are not hunters, 

 and fo do not live upon flefh, but upon vegetables, particularly the 



roots 

 • Page $6. 

 t Ibid. 



