Nevertheless the principal cause of all these deaths and diseases is not what they say it is, but it is something to their shame; in the Summer time, when our ships come, they never stop gorging themselves excessively during several weeks with various kinds of food not suitable to the inactivity of their lives; they get drunk, not only on wine but on brandy; so it is no wonder that they are obliged to endure some gripes of the stomach in the following Autumn. This nation takes little care for the future, but, like all the other Americans, enjoys the present; they are not urged on to work except by present necessity. As long as they have anything, they are always celebrating feasts and having songs, dances and speeches; if there is [70] a crowd of them you need not expect anything else; there are then some fine truces in the woods. To speak of restraint, when they are not at war, is equal to proposing a riot. If you tell them that they will be hungry in the Winter: _Endriex_, they will answer you, "It is all the same to us, we shall stand it well enough: we spend seven and eight days, even ten sometimes, without eating anything, yet we do not die." Nevertheless, if they are by themselves and where they may safely listen to their wives (for women are everywhere better managers), they will sometimes make some storehouses for the Winter, where they will keep smoked meat, roots, shelled acorns, peas, beans, or prunes bought from us, etc. The storehouses are like this;--They put these provisions in sacks, which they tie up in [71] big pieces of bark; these they suspend from the interlacing branches of two or three trees so that neither rats nor other animals, nor the dampness of the ground, can injure them. These are their storehouses. Who is to take care of them when they go away? for, if they stay, their stores would soon be consumed; so they go somewhere else until the time of famine. Such are the only guards they leave. For in truth this is not a nation of thieves. Would to God that the Christians who go among them would not set them a bad example in this respect. But as it is now, if a certain Savage is suspected of having stolen anything he will immediately throw this fine defense in your teeth, _We are not thieves, like you, Ilinen auio aciquoan guiro derquir_.