By all accounts too, their populousness is greatly decreased. Some imagine this is owing to that inveterate animosity, with which these so many petty nations were continually laboring one another's destruction and extirpation. Others impute it to the introduction by the Europeans, of the vice of drunkenness, and to the known effect of spirituous liquors in the excesses of their use, to which they are but too prone, in striking at the powers of generation, as well as at the principles of health and life. Not improbably too, numbers impatient of the encroachments of the Europeans on their country, and dreading the consequences of them to their liberty, for which they have a passionate attachment, and incapable of reconciling or assimilating their customs and manners to ours, have chosen to withdraw further into the western recesses of the continent, at a distance impenetrable to our approach. But which ever of these conjectures is the truest, or whether or not all of these causes have respectively concurred, in a lesser or greater degree, the fact is certain, that all these northern countries are considerably thinned of their natives, since the first discovery of them by the Europeans. Nor have I reason to think, but that this is true of America in general, wherever they have carried their power, or extended their influence. It is also true, that the women of this country are naturally not so prolific as those of some other parts of the world in the same latitude. One reason for this may be, their not having their menstrual flux so copiously, or for so long a time as those of Europe. Yet one would think, the plurality of wives permitted amongst them, might in some measure compensate for this defect, which, however, it evidently does not. Their women have always observed, not to present themselves at any public ceremony, or solemnity, whilst under their monthly terms, nor to admit the embraces of their husbands.