The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Eleven Volumes, Volume 06: Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent PersonsJohnson, Samuel
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The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Eleven Volumes, Volume 06: Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons
Johnson, Samuel
English essays -- 18th century
They then proceeded to show them their wounds and diseases, in hopes
of a miraculous and instantaneous cure; to which the English, to
benefit and undeceive them at the same time, applied such remedies as
they used on the like occasions.
They were now grown confident and familiar, and came down to the camp
every day, repeating their ceremonies and sacrifices, till they were
more fully informed how disagreeable they were to those whose favour
they were so studious of obtaining: they then visited them without
adoration, indeed, but with a curiosity so ardent, that it left them
no leisure to provide the necessaries of life, with which the English
were, therefore, obliged to supply them.
They had then sufficient opportunity to remark the customs and
dispositions of these new allies, whom they found tractable and
benevolent, strong of body, far beyond the English, yet unfurnished
with weapons, either for assault or defence, their bows being too weak
for any thing but sport. Their dexterity in taking fish was such,
that, if they saw them so near the shore that they could come to them
without swimming, they never missed them.
The same curiosity that had brought them in such crowds to the shore,
now induced Drake, and some of his company, to travel up into the
country, which they found, at some distance from the coast, very
fruitful, filled with large deer, and abounding with a peculiar kind
of conies, smaller than ours, with tails like that of a rat, and paws
such as those of a mole; they have bags under their chin, in which
they carry provisions to their young.
The houses of the inhabitants are round holes dug in the ground, from
the brink of which they raise rafters, or piles, shelving towards the
middle, where they all meet, and are crammed together; they lie upon
rushes, with the fire in the midst, and let the smoke fly out at the
door.
The men are generally naked; but the women make a kind of petticoat of
bulrushes, which they comb like hemp, and throw the skin of a deer
over their shoulders. They are very modest, tractable, and obedient to
their husbands.
Such is the condition of this people; and not very different is,
perhaps, the state of the greatest part of mankind. Whether more
enlightened nations ought to look upon them with pity, as less happy
than themselves, some skepticks have made, very unnecessarily, a
difficulty of determining. More, they say, is lost by the perplexities
than gained by the instruction of science; we enlarge our vices with
our knowledge, and multiply our wants with our attainments, and the
happiness of life is better secured by the ignorance of vice, than by
the knowledge of virtue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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