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cd, that there never were any Anthropophagi, ex- 

 cept in South America, it is becaufe all thofe na- 

 tions, amongft whom this deteftabie cuftom pre- 

 vailed, paffed thither. He might, ho doubt, have 

 faved himfelf the labour of making fo weak an an- 

 fwer to an objection, which no perfon would proba- 

 bly ever have made, fince feveral of the North 

 Americans have ever been, and ftill are, Anthro- 

 pophagi : but let us. proceed to follow him in the 

 explication of his hypothefis. I call it hypothefis, 

 becaufe where memoirs are wanting for ellabiiibing 

 the truth, he is reduced, like all thofe who have 

 handled this queftion, to the neceffity of having re- 

 courfe to probability, and it muft be e (teemed fuf- 

 ficient to keep within fight of it. 



Pliny indeed, fays, that the Scythians valued 

 themfelves for having many horfes ; but he does 

 not fay, that all the Scythians did fo. Surabo men- 

 tions feveral nations of them living north of the 

 Cafpian Sea, and part of whom led a wandering 

 life : what he fays of their manners and way of 

 living, agrees, in a great many circumftances, with 

 what has been remarked in the Indians of America : 

 now it is no great miracle, adds Laet, that thefe 

 refemblances are not abfolutely perfect ; and thofe 

 people, even before they left their own country, 

 already differed from each other, and went not by 

 the fame name : their change of abode effected 

 what remained. We find the lame likenefs between 

 feveral American nations and the Samoeides, fettled 

 on the great river Oby, fuch as the Ruffians have 

 reprefented them to us and it is much more na- 

 tural to fuppofe, that colonies of thefe nations 

 palled over to America, by crofting the icy fea on 

 their fledges, than to caufe the Norwegians to tra- 

 vel all the way that Grotius has marked out for 



them. 



