f ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



more a ftepmother, than to any other people we hear of. It is the 

 people of Dicmens Land in the northern part of New Holland, of 

 whom we have a very particular account §-om Dampier. They are 

 the people who live with lefs affiftance from nature or art, than any 

 other people we have heard of. The land where they live produces 

 nothing which men can live upon, nor any bird or beaft, which 

 they can catch for food] for they are wholly unprovided with inftru- 

 ments for that purpofe, not having the ufe of weapons of any kind. 

 The fea they have not the ufe of by navigation, for they have not 

 canoes, nor by fifhing with nets or lines. Neither do they dive and 

 take them with their hands, like the people of the country from 

 whence the Wild Girl came. But they catch fifh by making dykes 

 acrofs bays or inlets of the fea, over which the fea, when the tide 

 flows, carries the fifh, and leaves them, when it ebbs, to be catched 

 by men. Befides that, they live very much upon oyfters, mufcles, 

 cockles, and other fliell-fiih, which they gather upon the beach. The' 

 only arts of life which they have are language, by which they are 

 enabled to live together in fmall herds; but which we muft fuppofe 

 to^be as barbarous a language as can well be imagined, but fome- 

 thing more than mere animal cries, as we know from fome words, 

 which the travellers give of it; and even words better than thofe of the' 

 Chinefe ; for they are words of feveral fyllables. They have alfo 

 the ufe of fire, with which they roaft their Ihell-fifh; for they do not 

 need it to keep themfelves warm, enjoying fo mild a climate. This 

 fire they produce, by twirling betwixt their hands, upon a piece of 

 flat wood, a ftick blunt at the end which is upon the wood, in the man 

 ner defcribed by Dampier. They have no houfes at all, not even huts 

 of the rudeft conftrudion, fo that they lie in the open air; nor have 

 they any kind of cloathing. And thus thev 'ive without houfes 

 clothes, or any food from the earth; and alfo witiK.ut any art of na' 

 vigation, catchmg filh only in the way mat 1 have '...ntioned or 

 gathering them upon the beach. They... ^V^efore, as 1 have 



faid, 



