144 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMA.C. 
[February, 
It has been justly observed, that in proportion as the arts in use 
with any people are connected with the primary demands of 
nature, they carry the greater likelihood of originality ; because 
those demands must have been administered to from a period 
coeval with the existence of the people themselves. 
The arts of a primitive people, like their wants, are generally 
few, confined principally to the protection and sustenance of the 
mere animal body — to the construction of such abodes as are re- 
quired to defend them from the inclemencies of the elements, and 
external assaults of every description, and to the numerous in- 
genious expedients for procuring food, as climate or circumstances 
may require it to be sought, either from the plain or the forest, 
the mountain or the seashore. Man's earliest effort is to avoid 
pain, and his second to procure pleasure. The two requisites 
just named, of shelter and sustenance, are so simple in themselves, 
and act so immediately on the external senses of the most wild 
or uncultivated of the human species, that the efforts made to 
supply them are little else than an instinctive obedience to the 
mandates of nature, as both of them are essential to the continu- 
ance of life. 
In a country like Sumatra, generally rich in soil, warm in cli- 
mate, and abundant in a vast variety of nourishing and delicious' 
fruits, which grow and ripen without the labour of man, and 
almost drop into his mouth as he indolently stretches him-' 
self in the shade of teeming boughs, on which blossoms and ma- 
turity are promiscuously mingled, — the springs of necessity, which 
are the primum mobile of invention, soon lose their power and 
elasticity. As a natural consequence, the intellectual machine 
will perform fewer and more simple revolutions, than where a more 
rigorous climate, producing more complicated wants, imparts 
health and vigour to the body, fresh incentives to the mind, and 
new activities to ingenuity. 
Roused to action by the rude necessities of his arctic climate, 
the feeble Esquimaux has invented comforts which do honour to 
his race. With no other materials than the frozen snow around 
him, he constructs a neat and commodious habitation, perfectly 
adapted in form and capacity to the nature of the region he in-^ 
habits. The rapidity and neatness with which he raises this edi- 
fice, and renders it impervious to the rigorous atmosphere around 
