1770 FREEDOM FROM DISEASE 239 
appear to a European, to draw nourishment from a class of 
plant which in Europe no animal, hardly even insects, will 
taste, I am much inclined to think that it affords a nourish- 
ing and wholesome diet. These people eat but little, and 
this is the foundation of their meals all summer, at least 
from the time that their roots are planted, till the season 
for digging them up. Among them I have seen several 
very healthy old men, and in general the whole of them are 
as vigorous a race as can be imagined. 
To the southward, where little or nothing is planted, fern 
roots and fish must serve them all the year. Accordingly, 
we saw that they had made vast piles of both, especially 
the latter, which were dried in the sun very well, and I 
suppose meant for winter stock, when possibly fish is not 
so plentiful or the trouble of catching it is greater than in 
summer. 
Water is their universal drink, nor did I see any signs 
of any other liquor being at all known to them, or any 
method of intoxication. If they really have not, happy they 
must be allowed to be above all other nations that I have 
heard of. 
So simple a diet, accompanied with moderation, must be 
productive of sound health, which indeed these people are 
blessed with in a very high degree. Though we were in 
several of their towns, where young and old crowded to see 
us, actuated by the same curiosity as made us desirous of 
seeing them, I do not remember a single instance of a 
person distempered in any degree that came under my 
inspection, and among the numbers of them that I have 
seen naked, I have never seen an eruption on the skin or 
any signs of one, scars or otherwise. Their skins, when 
they came off to us in their canoes, were often marked in 
patches with a little floury appearance, which at first 
deceived us, but we afterwards found that it was owing to 
their having been in their passage wetted with the spray of 
the sea, which, when it was dry, left the salt behind it in a 
fine white powder. 
Such health drawn from so sound principles must make 
