56 Of the Checks to Population Bk. i. 



destructive habits of the women. These habits 

 would indeed in a great measure yield to the 

 change of circumstances ; and the substitution of 

 a more quiet and sedentary life for a life of perpe- 

 tual wandering and hardship, would immediately 

 render the women more fruiful, and enable them 

 at the same time to attend to the wants of a larger 

 family. 



In a general view of the American continent, 

 as described by historians, the population seems 

 to have been spread over the surface very nearly 

 in proportion to the quantity of food which the 

 inhabitants of the different parts, in the actual 

 state of their industry and improvement, could 

 obtain ; and that, with few exceptions, it pressed 

 hard against this limit, rather than fell short of it, 

 appears from the frequent recurrence of distress 

 for want of food in all parts of America. 



Remarkable instances occur, according to Dr. 

 Robertson, of the calamities which rude nations 

 suffer by famine. As one of them, he mentions 

 an account given by Alvar Nugnez Cabeca de 

 Vaca, one of the Spanish adventurers, who resid- 

 ed almost nine years among the savages of Flo- 

 rida. He describes them as unacquainted with 

 every species of agriculture, and living chiefly 

 upon the roots of different plants, which they 

 procure with great difficulty, wandering from 

 place to place in search of them. Sometimes 

 they kill game, sometimes they catch fish, but in 

 such small quantities, that their hunger is so ex- 

 treme as to compel them to eat spiders, the eggs 



