and leads only to feats of courage and dexterity in the field, we may justly represent these scattered hunting tribes as an example of a state of nature or equality.

In fact, even of this degree of equality the native Indians of North and South America afford us almost the only instance.* Reduced in number, and degenerated, as there appears reason to believe, from a more improved state to which their ancestors had advanced, without government, or policy, or laws of their own, they occupy a few spots in that vast continent. Their state of society exhibits to us

*

"The Indians are strangers to all distinctions of property, except in the articles of domestic use, which every one considers as his own, and increases as circumstances admit. No visible form of government is established. They allow of no such distinction as magistrate or subject, every one appearing to enjoy an independence that cannot be controlled. They are total strangers to the idea of separate property in land."-Travels by order of the American Government, under Captains Clark and Lewis.

This description does not include the Indians of New Spain and Peru, many of whom are settled in villages, and

an assemblage of human beings, whose highest enjoyment is indolence, and who are only roused even to a temporary exertion, by the sting of necessity. No prospect of security can excite them to the energy requisite for agriculture. Could an European village be transported into Chili or Paraguay, with all its industry and foresight, and ensured from the maladies attendant on such a change of climate, the soil and seasons would overspread them with luxury and plenty for many generations. But the inhabitants of South America, with all the advantages of unimpoverished land and luxuriant climate, are not less pressed for subsistence than the occupants of the most rugged and inhospitable islands.* Careless of the

retain the advantages which they derived before the Spanish conquests from a more advanced state of government and civilization.

"The effects of famine are common to almost all the equinoctial regions. In the province of New Andalusia in South America, I have seen villages whose inhabitants are forced to disperse themselves from time to time in the deserts, to pick up a scanty subsistence from the wild plants. In the province de los Pastos, the Indians, when the potatoes

regular and fixed supply which cultivation affords, they depend for two thirds of the year on the precarious resources of hunting and fishing; and are so sparing in their exertions towards providing a sufficient stock, that a diminution of the quantity of game, or delay of the usual season for procuring it, exposes them to all the misery of scarcity and famine. Yet are they incapable of judging of the probable future from the past distress: nor ever led by experience to prevent the recurrence of an evil. The same indifferent carelessness appears also in their dress and lodging, if such terms can be applied to the miserable protections which the Americans contrive against the vicissitudes

fail, which are their principal nourishment, repair sometimes to the most elevated ridge of the Cordilleras to subsist on the juice of achupallas. The Otomais at Uruana swallow, during several months, potter's earth, to absorb the gastric juice. Under the torrid zone, where a beneficent hand seems every where to have scattered the germ of abundance, man, careless and phlegmatic, experiences periodically a want of subsistence which the industry of more civilized nations banishes from the most sterile regions of the North." -Humboldt, vol. i. p. 123.

of weather. It appears, also, in the total absence of a quality so universal among civilized nations, curiosity: a quality which probably originates in the idea of gaining some new acquisition, and is certainly in a great degree characteristic of an active mind. An European, with all his convenience of dress and equipage, passes unnoticed through an assembly of halfnaked Indians; or if he attracts any degree of curiosity, a fragment of scarlet cloth, or a string of beads, is more coveted than any addition he could propose to their real comfort.*

* Dr. Pinckard, after describing his visit to an Indian town up the river Berbische, adds, "The curiosity by which we were actuated was by no means reciprocal: we passed through their huts, and round their persons, in a manner unnoticed; and they continued at work, or unemployed, exactly as we found them." Notes on the West Ind. ii. 422. All travellers unite in the same rewarks. See Ashe, or Ulloa. The latter says, "When an Indian is settled on his hams, their usual and favourite posture, no reward can make him stir; so that if a traveller has lost his way, and happens to reach any of their cottages, they hide themselves, though the whole of their labour would consist in accompanying the traveller a quarter of a league, for which they would be generously rewarded."

The

Without dwelling on the detail of manners uniformly the same, and generally acknowledged, it is sufficient to observe that equality of rank and condition, wherever it is met with, affords a similar scene of careless ignorance, and indifference to all improvement. nearer you approach towards it, the more stagnant and inactive is the human mind; the farther you recede from it, the energies are excited in proportion. It must be allowed, therefore, that the same appearance must have a common cause of universal operation. Is this cause to be sought, as some writers have been inclined to conclude, in the nature of the people themselves? Certainly not. We learn the contrary from the same evidence which has hitherto been adduced against them. We are

informed by Ulloa, that "a great part of the rusticity in their minds must be attributed to the want of culture. The Indians of the missions of Paraguay are, among others, remarkable proofs of this, where, by the zeal,