BOOK III. CHAP. IT, 385 



or make fatlsfaflory prefents to their owner and his defcendants. 

 Elegance of thinking finds no place here; the air is foft, the food 

 ftimulating, and the paffions unreflrained. Child-birth is attended 

 with little or no danger or difficulty. The fruitfulnefs of the foil 

 leaves no room to fear that children will become burdenfome; and, 

 this anxiety being removed, nature does the reft. 



Many families ally themfclves by marriage as foon as the children 

 are born, without any other ceremony than the confent of parents 

 on both fides. Such as have made free with the paliion before 

 marriage, are not the lefs refpedted by their hufoands, or the public : 

 on the contrary, they arc efteemed the better qualified to enter into 

 matrimony, and are accordingly often preferred to ablolute ve/lals. 



Scarcely any of the prifoners taken in battle are now put to 

 death, but are almoft all fold, and brought to fome part of the coalt. 

 Polygamy univerfally prevails, and contributes greatly to popu- 

 loufnefs. Of this we may form fome judgement from Hafflcquift's 

 account of Egypt; he informs us of a Turk, who by feveral wives 

 had 40 children ; of another who had at once in his haram feventy- 

 feven women all with child by him ; and a third who had by eight 

 wives, in ten years, eighty children, all of whom lived to mature 

 age. But to produce examples of the like kind among the Negroe 

 provinces; Bofman, in his account of Whidah, mentions that he 

 had frequently feen fathers who had upwards of two hundred chil- 

 dren. Upon interrogating a certain captain of the king's guards 

 concerning the number of his fiimily, he replied with a figh, that 

 he. was unhappy in that particular, not having above feventy living* 

 Bofinan then aflced him how many had died, and he anfwered feventy. 

 Thus a family of 140 children is by no means looked upon as ex- 

 traordinary [q\. 



Of the flaves fhipped from the coaft, not a fixth part are women ; 

 and this happens from there being fewer female criminals to be 

 tranfported, and no female warriors to be taken prifoners. The 

 number of females born exceeds the males, and though fome 

 Blacks in the inland countries have ten, others an hundred wives, 

 yet by the ftridleft enquiries from the inland merchants, it appears 

 that no man goes v/ithout a wife from a fcarcity of women ; and that 



[q] Mod. Univ. Ilift. vol. xvi, p. 402. 



Vol. II. D d d although 



