"'The celebrated traveller, Bruce, says, that the Abyssinian women retire by themselves, and go through the process of child-birth with so much ease and expedition, that they do not confine themselves a day after labour, but return to their usual occupations immediately. "'The same simplicity, expedition, and freedom from danger, attend this natural process amongst the natives in most parts of Asia, Africa, the West Indies, and America, where the mode of living among the natives is more simple and abstemious, and their occupations and general habits more laborious, than in more civilized countries. "'The Moorish women have no midwives, but are usually alone at the time of delivery, lying on the ground under an indifferent tent. They will even travel, on the same day, a distance of fifteen or twenty miles. "'In Morocco the women suffer so little, that they frequently go through the duties of the house on the day after their delivery, with the child on their back. "'One respectable traveller assures us, that with the native Africans labour is so easy, and trusted so entirely to nature, that no one knows of its existence till the woman appears at the door of the hut with the child. "'Another, equally respectable, tells us, that as soon as an American Indian woman bears a child, she _goes into the water and immerses it and herself_.[76] One evening he asked an Indian where his wife was: he replied: "I suppose she has gone into the woods to set a trap for birds." In about an hour she returned with a new-born infant in her arms, and holding it up exclaimed: "Here, Englishman, here is a young warrior!" Were it necessary, many more instances might be brought forward. But it has been said, this occurs only in warm climates, where the heat relaxes the parts concerned in parturition. This objection is not consistent with truth, for the natives of Livonia, and the savages of North America, retire to some private place, and return immediately after their delivery to their customary work; and the Greenlanders do all their common business just before, and very soon after their labour, and a still-born or deformed child is seldom seen or heard of among them. Still further to establish the assertion that human parturition is not necessarily a process of danger, we know that in this country servant girls, who become illegitimately pregnant, very often absent themselves for an hour or two, and, after giving birth to a child, return to the discharge of their household duties immediately.[77] It is, therefore, obvious that the difficulty and danger that so often attend child-bearing in civilized society,[78] are attributable, principally, to _unnatural customs and habits of living_, in which, women, in this and other countries, indulge from their infancy,[79] and which operate by preventing the constitution from acquiring its proper firmness and vigour, and by producing a weak, feeble, and irritable state of body, &c.'" Dr. Johnson adds: "This is the