i6 THE MODERN AMAZONS." 



them may found, yet we cannot direffiy prbnouncS 

 them to be abfolutely falfe or abfurd. For he that will 

 refufe to attribute firmnefs, bravery, or even feverity 

 and cruelty, to the female character among favage na- 

 tions, muffc be little verfed in the hiftory of the rude 

 and uncultivated people of antient and modern times ; 

 and he that will maintain, that ari entire nation of wo- 

 men without men, and of men without women, can- 

 not fublift, has the incontrovertible teftimony of a 

 Pallas againll: him, who has made us intimately ac- 

 quainted with the Saporagian Kofacs, who fwarm in 

 thoufands about the deferts of Afia without women j 

 and increafe their numbers by kidnapping boys. 



Still more probability in favour of the pretended 

 exigence of a feminine nation is hence obtained, that 

 thofe who have mentioned it, place it in a' region of 

 the world where the- women are llaves to the men, and 

 where they might ealily be fuppofed to efcape from the 

 fcourge of their defpots, and that they only fummoned 

 up patience to remain among them for fo long a time 

 as was neceifary for the propagation of their fex. 



That they made away with children that were be- 

 gotten of them, was in them a matter of political ne- 

 ceffity, not more unnatural and cruel, than that which 

 in our times urges fovereigns to drive thoufands of 

 their fubjecls to ftand againft the difcharge of fire-arms, 

 and to ca-de them to be maffacred by others to whom 

 they have never given any perfonal offence. 



They murdered their male children, becaufe they 

 held them for their natural enemies : as the child-mur- 

 derers among us polifhed moderns make away with 



the 



