The uniformity which prevails in the features of the American aboriginals, exists also in the qualities of their minds, which generally exhibit an apparent indifference to pain or pleasure that would have done honour to a Stoic. Insensible to the charms of beauty and the power of love, they treat their women with coldness and indifference, being at no pains to win their favour by the assiduity of courtship, and still less solicitous to preserve it by indulgence and gentleness. Grave, even unto sadness, they have nothing of that giddy vivacity peculiar to many Europeans. Frequently placed in situations of danger and distress, depending on themselves alone, and wrapped up in their own thoughts and schemes, their minds are tinted with an habitual melancholy. Their attention to others is small, the range of their own ideas narrow. Hence that taciturnity which is so disgusting to men accustomed to exchange their thoughts in social conversation. When not engaged in some active pursuit, the wild Americans often sit whole days in one posture without opening their lips. When they go forth to war or to the chase, they usually march in a line at some distance from one another, and without exchanging a word. The same profound silence is observed when they row together in a canoe. It is only when they are animated by intoxicating liquors, or roused by the excitement of the dance, that they relax from their usual insensibility and give some signs of sympathy with their kind. All their thoughts intent upon self-preservation, they live only in the present, and seem alike indifferent to the past and the future. Gratitude, friendship, ambition, are sentiments of which they have no idea; and war or the pursuit of wild animals the only occupations which are able to rouse them from their stolid apathy. Many tribes depend entirely upon fishing or the chase for their subsistence; others rear a few plants, which in a rich soil and a warm climate are soon trained to maturity. With a moderate exertion of industry and foresight the maize, the manioc, and the plantain would enable them to live in abundance, but such is their improvident laziness that the provisions they obtain by cultivating the ground are but limited and scanty, and thus when the woods and rivers withhold their usual gifts, they are often reduced to extreme distress. The streams and lagunes of South America abound with an infinite variety of the most delicate fish, and Nature seems to have indulged the indolence of the Indian by the liberality with which she ministers in this way to his wants. They swarm in such shoals that in some places they are caught without art or industry. In others the natives have discovered a method of infecting the water with the juice of certain plants, by which the fish are so intoxicated that they float on the surface, and are taken with the hand.