The Abipones are indebted for their strength and longevity partly to their parents, partly to themselves. The vigour of youth, preserved by temperance, accompanies them during the whole of their lives, and is even transmitted to their children. The Abipones never indulge in licentious gratifications during youth, and though of a fiery temperament, debilitate their constitutions by no irregularities. They amuse themselves with conversation, mirth, and jesting, but always within the limits of modesty. By a sort of natural instinct peculiar to themselves, both boys and girls, hold in abhorrence all means and opportunities of infringing the laws of decorum: you never see them talking together either publicly or privately; never idling in the street. The girls love to assist their mothers in domestic employments; the continual exercise of arms and horses engrosses the chief attention of the young men. The Indians of other nations are often shorter, slenderer, and less robust. Many of them consume away before they arrive at manhood; others grow prematurely old, and die an untimely death. Do you enquire the cause? I will tell you my opinion on the subject. Many are unhealthy because their parents are so; others from being oppressed with Labour, and very poorly provided with food, clothes, and lodging; the majority because they have exhausted their natural vigour by indulging from their earliest youth in shameful pleasures. _Libidinosa etenim, et intemperans adolescentia effœtum corpus tradit senectuti_, as Cicero observes, in his treatise on Old Age. How many of those who die a premature death would deserve to have this epitaph engraven on their tomb, _Nequitia est quæ te non sinit esse senem_. Too early marriages are often a cause why we find the other Indians weaker and less vigorous and long-lived than the Abipones, who never think of entering the matrimonial state till they are near thirty years old, and never marry a woman under twenty; which, as philosophers and physicians say, conduces much to the preservation of strength, lengthening of life, and producing robust children. It cannot be doubted, that tender parents never produce very strong children; and since the affections of the mind are consequences of the habit of the body, as Galen teaches with much prolixity, it cannot be wondered that such children should be as imbecile in mind as in body.