XCVII. By the same mode of reasoning, the Egyptians should be the keenest people in the world, because they dwell under the brightest and most serene sky that is to be found in all the globe. There is scarce a cloud passes over Egypt in the course of a year, and the land would be totally barren, if it was not refreshed and fertilized by the waters of the Nile; and although for some ages, antiquity venerated that region as the seat of the sciences, which is manifest from Pythagoras, Homer, Plato, and other Greek philosophers, having traveled thither to improve themselves in philosophy and the mathematics; this does not prove, that they were more subtile and ingenious than other mortals, but rather, that the sciences had gone wandering about the earth, and that sometimes they took their stations in one country, and at others in another. The same thing may be said of the valley of Lima, the inhabitants of which country do not know what rain is, the land being fertilized by a light dew, assisted by a happy temperament of air, which is neither hot nor cold; notwithstanding which, the natives are not people of a delicate ingenuity, but rather the contrary, for the Pizarras found them more easy to be subdued by a few stratagems, than Cortez found the Mexicans, with all the arts he could employ, assisted by the whole power of his arms. XCVIII. I am not ignorant, that the inhabitants of Bœotia were antiently looked upon, as a most rude, dull people, and that _Bœoticum Ingenium_ and _Bœtica Sus_, were proverbial terms of contempt, and used to express or denote, a heavy stupid person; and also, that this stupidity was attributed to the gross atmosphere, loaded with vapour, which prevails in that country; hence the expression of Horace in one of his epistles: _Bœoticum in crasso jurares aëre natum._ But I believe, and with some foundation, that the antients quoted did not do that country justice; imputing the ignorance which proceeded from want of application, to the want of capacity; and Bœotia’s lying on the confines of Attica, where learning flourished, seems to strengthen this opinion; for it is hardly probable, that within sight of a province, which is the theatre of wisdom, you should view another, which is a colony of ignorance and stupidity. On the other hand, it is certain, that Bœotia has produced some geniuses of the first rate; such as Pindar, the prince of Lyric Poets, and the great Plutarch, who, in the opinion of lord Bacon, was full equal to the first men of antiquity; and I suspect, that by looking back to the more early times of antiquity, we shall find a period, in which the Bœotians, in their culture of the arts and sciences, excelled, not only their neighbours, but all the other nations of Europe; because Cadmus, when he came from Phœnicia, was the first who introduced the letters of the alphabet into Greece, and was the first person in Europe, who invented the art of