58 Of the Checks to Population Bk. i. 



wore as clothing, were reduced to the dreadful 

 extremity of supporting themselves on the flesh 

 of two of their children.* In another place, he 

 says, " It has sometimes happened that the 

 " Indians who come in summer to trade at the 

 " factories, missing the succours they expected, 

 " have been obliged to singe off the hair from 

 " thousands of beaver-skins, in order to feed upon 

 " the leather."! 



The Abbe" Raynal, who is continually reason- 

 ing most inconsistently in his comparisons of 

 savage and civilized life, though in one place he 

 speaks of the savage as morally sure of a compe- 

 tent subsistence, yet, in his account of the nations 

 of Canada, says, that though they lived in a coun- 

 try abounding in game and fish, yet in some sea- 

 sons and sometimes for whole years, this resource 

 failed them ; and famine then occasioned a great 

 destruction among a people who were at too great 

 a distance to assist each other.J 



Charlevoix, speaking of the inconveniences and 

 distresses to which the missionaries were subject, 

 observes that not unfrequently the evils which he 

 had been describing are effaced by a greater, in 

 comparison of which all the others are nothing. 

 This is famine. It is true, says he, that the sa- 

 vages can bear hunger with as much patience as 

 they shew carelessness in providing against it; 



* Robertson, p. 196. 



f P. 194. 



X Raynal, Histoire des hides, torn. viii. l.xv. p. 22. 



