Ch. iv. among the American Indians. 47 



■s 



many different families; and fourscore or a hun- 

 dred people are crowded together under the same 

 roof. When the families live separately, the huts 

 are extremely small, close and wretched, without 

 windows, and with the doors so low, that it is ne- 

 cessary to creep on the hands and knees to enter 

 them.* On the north-west coast of America, the 

 houses are, in general, of the large kind; and 

 Meares describes one of most extraordinary di- 

 mensions, belonging to a chief near Nootka Sound, 

 in which eight hundred persons ate, sat, and slept.f 

 All voyagers agree with respect to the filth of the 

 habitations and the personal nastiness of the peo- 

 ple on this coast.;]; Captain Cook describes them 

 as swarming with vermin, which they pick off and 

 eat ;§ and speaks of the state of their habitations 

 in terms of the greatest disgust. |[ PeVouse de- 

 clares that their cabins have a nastiness and stench 

 to which the den of no known animal in the world 

 can be compared.^" 



Under such circumstances, it may be easily ima- 

 gined what a dreadful havoc an epidemic must 

 make, when once it appears among them; and it 

 does not seem improbable, that the degree of filth 

 described should generate distempers of this na- 



* Robertson, b. iv. p. 182. Voyage d'UUoa, torn. i. p. 340. 

 t Meares's Voyage, ch. xii. p. 138. 



X Meares's Voyage, ch. xxiii. p. 252. Vancouver's Voyage, vol. 

 iii. b. vi. c. i. p. 313. 



§ Cook's 3d Voyage, vol. ii. p. 305. 



|| Id. c. iii. p. 316. 



^ Voyage de Perousc, c. ix. p. 403. 



