334 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1 7 SQ. 



otherwise, and unpractised in the European art of lying and dissimulation ; 

 but as to the brutal passions, they are sottish and sensual as the beasts of the field. 



15. They are almost always either eating or sleeping, unless when they go 

 a hunting. At all hours of the night, whenever they awake, they go to the 

 homing-pot, that is, maze dressed in a manner like our peeled wheat ; or else 

 a piece of venison barbecuted, that is, wrapped up in leaves, and roasted in the 

 embers. 



16. They drink little besides succahannah, that is, fair water, unless when 

 they can get spirits, such as rum, from the English, which they will always 

 drink to excess, if they can ])ossibly get them ; but do not much care for them 

 unless they can have enough to make tl^m drunk ; and it seems they wonder 

 much at the English for purchasing wine at so dear a rate, when rum is much 

 cheaper, and will make them sooner drunk. 



17. They use tobacco much, which they smoke in short pipes of their own 

 making, having excellent clay, which Mr, C. tried in making crucibles, which 

 he could not discern were inferior to the German. They make also neat pots 

 of the same clay, which will endure the fire for ar)y common uses. 



J 8. They have no opium, though in some old fields on York river, there 

 grow poppies perhaps of no despicable virtue. In fevers, and when their sick 

 cannot sleep, they apply the flowers of stramonium to the temples, which has 

 an effect like laudanum. It is asserted, that when the soldiers were sent over 

 to quell the insurrection of Bacon, &c, being at James-town, several of them 

 went to gather a sallad in the fields, and finding great quantities of a herb 

 called James-town weed, they gathered it; and by eating it plentifully, were 

 rendered foolish, as if they had been drunk, or were become idiots. Dr. Lee 

 likewise assured Mr. C. that the same accident happened once in his own family ; 

 but that after a night or two's sleep, they recovered. 



19. Their sports are dancing: tlieir games are playing with straws, which as 

 he was not perfectly acquainted with, he found it hard to describe; he can 

 therefore only tell how it appears to a spectator: they take a certain number of 

 straws, and spread them in their hands, holding them as if they were cards, 

 then they close them, and spread them again, and turn them very suddenly, 

 and dextrously. Their exercise is hunting, that is, shooting with a gun, or 

 with bow and arrow, in which they excel. Their women work, plant the corn, 

 and weave baskets or mats. 



20, Several have been very old; seemingly without any remarkable difference 

 between them and the English natives. If the English live past 33, they gene- 

 rally live to a good age ; but many die between 30 and 33. 



