78 HISTORY OF 



natives appears to diminish, growing less and less 

 as we advance higher, till we come to those lati- 

 tudes that are destitute of all inhabitants whatso- 

 ever. 



The wretched natives of these climates seem 

 fitted by nature to endure the rigours of their 

 situation. As their food is but scanty and preca- 

 rious, their patience in hunger is amazing.* A 

 man who has eaten nothing for four days, can 

 manage his little canoe in the most furious waves, 

 and calmly subsist in the midst of a tempest that 

 would quickly dash an European boat to pieces. 

 Their strength is not less amazing than their pa- 

 tience ; a woman among them will carry a piece 

 of timber, or a stone, near double the weight of 

 what an European can lift. Their bodies are of a 

 dark grey all over ; and their faces brown, or 

 olive. The tincture of their skins partly seems 

 to arise from their dirty manner of living, being 

 generally daubed with train-oil ; and partly from 

 the rigours of climate, as the sudden alterations 

 of cold and raw air in winter, and of burning heats 

 in summer, shade their complexions by degrees, 

 till, in a succession of generations, they at last 

 become almost black. As the countries in which 

 these reside are the most barren, so the natives 

 seem the most barbarous of any part of the earth. 

 Their more southern neighbours of America treat 

 them with the same scorn that a polished nation 

 would treat a savage one ; and we may readily 

 judge of the rudeness of those manners, which 



Crantz, vol.i. p. 134. 



