54 Of the Checks to Population Bk. i. 



and the frequent wish to increase them,* without 

 supposing a superabundance of food in the terri- 

 tory actually possessed. 



That the causes,! which have been mentioned 

 as affecting the population of the Americans, are 

 principally regulated by the plenty or scarcity 

 of subsistence, is sufficiently evinced from the 

 greater frequency of the tribes, and the greater 

 numbers in each, throughout all those parts of the 

 country, where, from the vicinity of lakes or 

 rivers, the superior fertility of the soil, or further 

 advances in improvement, food becomes more 

 abundant. In the interior of the provinces border- 

 ing on the Oronoco, several hundred miles may 

 be traversed in different directions without finding 

 a single hut, or observing the footsteps of a single 

 creature. In some parts of North America, where 

 the climate is more rigorous, and the soil less fertile, 

 the desolation is still greater. Vast tracts of some 

 hundred leagues have been crossed through unin- 

 habited plains and forests. J The missionaries speak 

 of journeys of twelve days without meeting a 



* Lafitau, torn. ii. p. 163. 



f These causes may perhaps appear more than sufficient to keep 

 the population down to the level of the means of subsistence ; and 

 they certainly would be so, if the representations given of the 

 unfruitfulness of the Indian women were universally, or even ge- 

 nerally true. It is probable that some of the accounts are exag- 

 gerated, but it is difficult to say which ; anditmust be acknowledged, 

 that, even allowing for all such exaggerations, they are amply suf- 

 ficient to establish the point proposed. 



+ Robertson, b. iv. p. 129, 130. 



r 



