418 GENERAL FACTS. 
subject to summer fevers along that stream, large families of children were 
quite common. They sought as much as possible to avoid the unhealthy 
lowlands in the dry season by going up into the mountains. f 
But, after all, let no romantic reader be deceived, and long to escape 
from the hollow mockeries and the vain pomps and ambitions of civiliza- 
tion, and mingle in the -free, wild, and untrammeled life of the savage. It 
is one of the greatest delusions that ever existed. Of all droning and 
dreary lives that ever the mind of man conceived this is the chief. To pass 
long hours in silence, so saturated with sleep that one can sleep no more, 
sitting and brushing off the flies! Savages are not more sociable than civ- 
ilized men and women, but less; they talk very fast when some matter 
excites them, but for the most part they are vacuous, inane, and silent. 
Kindly Nature, what beneficence thou hast displayed in endowing the 
savage with the illimitable power of doing nothing, and of being happy in 
doing it! I lived nearly two years in sufficient proximity to them, and I 
give it as the result of my extended observations that they sleep, day and 
night together, from fourteen to sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. 
They lie down at night-fall, for they have no lights; and they seldom rise 
before the sun, in summer generally an hour or two after. During the day 
they are constantly drowsing. When on a march they frequently chatter a 
good deal, but when a halt is called they all drop on the ground, as if over- 
come by the heat, and sink into a torpid silence. They will lie in the shade 
for hours in the middle of the day, then slowly rouse up, commence chat- 
tering, and march until night-fall. 
