2IO ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III, 



fuaded, was it, in antient times, fuch a clofe covering as we v/ear, 

 by which both the air is excluded from our bodies, and the filth we 

 throw out by our fkins kept about us ; but it was another kind of 

 covering, fuch as I have faid the Greenlanders wear in their cold cli- 

 mate, or fuch as the inhabitants of Terra Del Fuego, a country ftlil 

 colder than Greenland, ufe, who have no other clothing than fkins 

 loofely tacked about them*. And, as to cold^ I fay further, the more 

 cold that a man accuftoms himfelf to endure, the healthier and 

 ftronger he is : And men, who, from a life in the fields in which they 

 flept in the open air, have paffed to a life under a roof and in clofe and 

 warm beds, are liable to difeafes, of which I have given one ex- 

 ample that fell under my own obfervation '\ ; whereas people, who 

 have made the moft fudden tranfition from the clofe houfed deli- 

 cate life to the open air, have recovered of fickneis. I was informed 

 of a (hip that fprung a leak, which obliged the crew, among whom 

 there were a great many Tick men, to take to the long boat, where, 

 after having been feveral days expofed to wind and rain in a very 

 tempeftuous fea, they were taken up by a fhip that they accidentally 

 met with, and the fick men were by that time quite recovered: And 

 it is a fa£t very well known in the army, that when it has occafion 

 to march from a camp, which it has occupied for any time, the fick 

 men in the hofpital, who are carried along with the army in wag- 

 gons, recover very much fader then they did in the hofpital. I 

 Tiave given other examples of the fame kind in Vok III. of this 

 work:]:, fufficient to prove, that our life in the open air is fo natu- 

 ral to us, that it will not only preferve our health, but recover it 

 when loft : And if fo, the Californians, who inhabit a very cold 

 country in the north-weft part of America, were very much in the 

 Ti"-ht, when they could not be perfuaded by the Jefuits to fleep with 

 them in their huts, but cliofe rather to lie at the door of them §. 

 Neither would they accept of clothes which were offered them by 



the 

 • Vol. IV. p. 53. t Vol. III. p. 81. % IbiJ. p. 80. c\-c. § r. 80. and 81. 



