Chap. I. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. f^ 



...The mod remarkable nation, in this ftate, were the people of the 

 Ladrone Iflands, or the Marianne Iflands, as the French call them; 

 who, before they were difccvered by the Spaniards, had not the ufe- 

 of firei and, who, when they hrft law it, fled from it as from a 

 devouring monfter. Their only food was fuch herb, as their ifland 

 afforded, and wl.at fifh they could catch ; but they ate no fle;h, nor 

 indeed were there any beaft^ i^^.ti^eir iflands that they could eat, ex- 

 cept fome bird3 refeml)ling turkeys but, inftead of killing and eat- 

 W them they tamed them and taught them to Ipeak. '1 hey were, 

 kowever,' of great fize and great ftreugth of body, being about ieven 

 foot high, and of wonderful agility as well as llrength. They had 

 the ufe'^of language; and had a race of uobles among them, to whom 

 they paid a wonderful refped, and by whom they appear to have 

 been governed, though there was nothing like an eftablifhed form 

 of government among them; nor had they the, leaft idea of religion, 

 tilldie Jefuits came among them, who made Chriftians of fome of 

 them, but with fo much difficulty and danger, thiu no l^fs than ten 

 miffionaries fuffered martyrdom in the caufe *. They were very 

 healthy; and the few difeafes they had, they had learned to cure by 

 fome herbs they found in the country. They commonly lived to the 

 ao-e of loo. This account, of fo extraordinary people, Martinierre,. 

 in his Diaionary, tells us, he took from Father Gaubienf, a Jefuit; 

 who having been, no doubt, in thofe iflands, and I fuppofe em- 

 ployed in converting the people, mufl have been very well mformed. 

 concerning them. 



I will mention only one other people, more (I think) in the na- 

 tural ftate, than any 1 have yet mentioned i but to whom nature is 



more 



* See an account of this people in Churchill's colkaion of voyages, volume iv: But 

 a much more full and accurate account of them, is to be found ui a French Hiftorical, 

 Geographical, and Critical, Diaionary, by Martinierre, volume vii. p. 123. and foliowuig. 



•>- Ibidem. 



