24 



described in the preceding part of this work, 

 and of several kinds of snares constructed with 

 much ingenuity, known by the general appella- 

 tion of guaches. It is a singular fact, that they 

 employed the same method of taking wild ducks, 

 in their lakes and rivers, as that made use of by 

 the Chinese, covering their heads with perfo- 

 rated gourds, and letting themselves glide gently- 

 down among them. These minutise wpuld per- 

 haps be scarcely worth attending to, in an ac- 

 count of the manners and discoveries of a people 

 well known for their advancement in the arts of 

 civilization, but in the history of a remote and 

 unknown nation, considered as savage, they be- 

 come important and even necessary to form a 

 correct opinion of the degree of their progress 

 in society. 



. With means of subsistence, sufiScient to have 

 procured them still greater conveniences of living, 

 it would seem that the Chilians ought to have 

 progressed with rapid steps towards the per- 

 fection of civil society. But from a species of 

 inertia, natural to man, nations often remain for 

 a long time stationary, even when circumstances 

 appear favourable to their improvement. The 

 transition from a savage to a social life is not so 

 easy as at first view may be imagined, and the 

 history of all civilized nations may be adduced 

 in proof of this proposition. 

 The Chilians were also isolated, and had none 



