HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



275 



often depopulated whole cities and provinces of the old 

 continent, and which annually commits immenfe havoc 

 in the Eafl: : the raoft terrible fcourge of the human race, 

 but hitherto warded off from the new world. 



Laftly, The fuppofed feeblenefs and unfound bodily 

 habit of the Americans do not correfpond with the length 

 of their lives. Among thofe Americans whofe great fa- 

 tigues and exceffive toils do not anticipate their death, 

 there are not a few who reach the age of eighty, ninety, 

 and an hundred years ; and, what is more, without there 

 being obferved in th'em that decay which time common- 

 ly produces in the hair, in the teeth, in the Ikin, and in 

 the mufcles of the human body. This phenomenon, fo 

 much admired by the Spaniards who refide in Mexico, 

 cannot be afcribed to any other caufe than the vigour of 

 their conftitutions, the temperance of their diet, and the 

 falubrity of their clime. Hiitorians, and other perfons 

 who have fojourned there for many years, report the 

 fame thing of other countries of the new world. But if 

 poffibly there is any region where life is not to fo much 

 prolonged, at leaft there is no one where it is fo much 

 fliortened as in Guinea, in Sierra Leona, in the Cape of 

 Good Hope, and other countries of Africa, in which 

 old age commonly begins at forty ; and he who arrives 

 at fifty is looked upon as an o&ogenary is with us (r). 



Of 



healthy places of America, this diftemper was not known hefore the year 1729, 

 and that it began among the crews of the European veffels, which arrived there 

 under the command of D. D. Giuftiniani. 



(r) The Hottentots, fays Buffon, are Ihort livers, for they hardly exceed forty 

 years of age. Drack attefts that certain nations inhabiting the frontiers of the 

 Ethiopian diftricts, on account of the fcarcity of aliment, feed on falted locufts, 

 and that this wretched food produces a horrid effect ; when they arrive at the 

 age of forty, certain flying infc6ls breed upon their bodies, which foon occaiion 

 their deaths, by devouring firft their "belly, then their breaft, and laftly their 

 very bones. Thefe, and the kind of infects by which, as M. de Paw himfelf 



confeffesj 



