360 lawson's history 



fell asleep. He followed the direction of his dream 

 and became perfectly well in a short time. N'ow, I 

 suppose no man has so little sense as to believe this 

 fable, yet it lets us see what they intend thereby, 

 and that it has, doubtless, worked feats enough to 

 gain it such an esteem amongst these savages who 

 are too w^ell versed in vegetables to be brought to 

 a continual use of any one cf them, upon a mere 

 conceit of fancy, without some apparent benefit 

 they found thereby ; especially when we are sen- 

 sible they drink the juices of plants to free nature 

 of her burdens, and not out of foppery and fash- 

 ion as other nations are oftentimes found to do. 

 Amongst all the discoveries of America by the 

 missionaries of the French and Spaniards I won- 

 der none of them was so kind to the world as to 

 have kept a catalogue of the distempers they 

 found the savages capable of curing, and their 

 method of cure, which might have been of some 

 advantage to our materia medica at home, when de* 

 livered by men of learning and other qualifica- 

 tions, as most of them are. Authors generally 

 tell us that the savages are well enough acquain- 

 ted with those plants which their climate affords, 

 and that some of them effect great cures, but by 

 what means and in what form, we are left in the 

 dark. The bark of the root of the sassafras tree 

 I have observed is much used by them. They 

 generally torrefy it in the embers, so strip off the 

 bark from the root, beating it to a consistence fit 

 to spread, so lay it on the grieved part, which both 



