235 



he dined *. The custom of marrying very 

 young, according to the testimony of the monks, 

 is no way detrimental to population. This 

 precocious nubility depends on the race, and 

 not on the influence of a climate excessively 

 warm. It is found on the north-west coast of 

 America, among the Eskimoes, and in Asia, 

 among the Kamtschadales, and the Coriacs, 

 where girls of ten years old are often mothers. 

 \t may appear astonishing, that the time of ges- 

 tation, the duration of pregnancy, is never al- 

 tered in a state of health, with any race, or in 

 any climate. 



The Chaymas are almost without beard on the 

 chin, like the Tungooses, and other nations of 

 the Mongul race. They' pluck out the few hairs 

 that appear ; but it is not just to say in general, 

 that they have no beard merely because they 

 pluck out the hairs. Independently of this 

 custom, the greater part of the natives would 

 be nearly beardless I say the greater part, 



* Bernal Diaz, Hist. verd. de la Nueva Espana, 1630, 

 cap. 91, p. 68. 



t There would nev er have been any difference of opinion 

 between physiologists upon the existence of the beard among 

 the Americans, if they had paid attention to what the first 

 historians of the Conquest of their country have said on this 

 subject; for example, Pigafetta, in 1519, in his journal pre- 

 served in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and published (in 

 1800) by Amoretti, p. 18 ; Benzoni, Hist, del Mundo Nu- 

 ■ ovo, 157*2, p. 35. Bembo, Hist. Venet., 1557, p. 86. 



