i/7o FREEDOM FROM DISEASE 



239 



appear to a European, to draw nourishment from a class of 

 plant which in Europe no animal, hardly even insects, will 

 taste, I am much inclined to think that it affords a nourish- 

 ing and wholesome diet. These people eat but little, and 

 this is the foundation of their meals all summer, at least 

 from the time that their roots are planted, till the season 

 for digging them up. Among them I have seen several 

 very healthy old men, and in general the whole of them are 

 as vigorous a race as can be imagined. 



To the southward, where little or nothing is planted, fern 

 roots and fish must serve them all the year. Accordingly, 

 we saw that they had made vast piles of both, especially 

 the latter, which were dried in the sun very well, and I 

 suppose meant for winter stock, when possibly fish is not 

 so plentiful or the trouble of catching it is greater than in 

 summer. 



Water is their universal drink, nor did I see any signs 

 of any other liquor being at all known to them, or any 

 method of intoxication. If they really have not, happy they 

 must be allowed to be above all other nations that I have 

 heard of. 



So simple a diet, accompanied with moderation, must be 

 productive of sound health, which indeed these people are 

 blessed with in a very high degree. Though we were in 

 several of their towns, where young and old crowded to see 

 us, actuated by the same curiosity as made us desirous of 

 seeing them, I do not remember a single instance of a 

 person distempered in any degree that came under my 

 inspection, and among the numbers of them that I have 

 seen naked, I have never seen an eruption on the skin or 

 any signs of one, scars or otherwise. Their skins, when 

 they came off to us in their canoes, were often marked in 

 patches with a little floury appearance, which at first 

 deceived us, but we afterwards found that it was owing to 

 their having been in their passage wetted with the spray of 

 the sea, which, when it was dry, left the salt behind it in a 

 fine white powder. 



Such health drawn from so sound principles must make 



