ia6 NATURAL HISTORY. 



Mr Fabry, who travelled a prodigious way to the 

 north-west of the Mississippi, and visited places which 

 no European had done before him, and of which con- 

 sequently, the savage inhabitants had not been de- 

 stroyed, has assured me, that that part of America is 

 to deserted, that he often travelled a hundred, and 

 two hundred leagues, without observing a single hu- 

 man face, or the smallest vestige of a habitation. He 

 adds, that, whenever he did meet with any habitations 

 they were always at immense distances from one ano- 

 ther ; and that, in each of them, there was frequently 

 not above one family. Sometimes he says there were 

 two or three families, but never above twenty persons 

 together ; and between these twenty persons and 

 twenty others, there was generally a space of a hun- 

 dred leagues at least. 



To dwell long on the customs of such savage na- 

 tions, would, in my opinion, be unnecessary. It has 

 not been always attended to by author?, that what 

 they have given us for established customs, and for 

 the manners of a community, were nothing more than 

 actions peculiar to a few individuals, and often deter- 

 mined by circumstances, or by caprice. Some nations 

 they tell us, eat their enemies, some burn them, and 

 some mutilate them. One nation, they say, is per- 

 petually at war ; and of another, the grand object is 

 to live in peace ; in one country, the child kills his 

 parent, when he has lived to a certain age ; and in 

 another, the parent eats his child. All these stories, 

 on which travellers have with so much complacency 

 enlarged, mean nothing more than that one savage 

 had devoured his enemy, another had burned or muti- 

 lated him, and a third had killed or eaten his child. 

 All these things may be known to happen in one, as 



