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208

Since America has become better known, we find
no canibals in Florida,--no men in Guiana who have their heads sunk into their breasts,--no martial Amazons. The giants of Patagonia have disappear-

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* It requires a more minute and accurate attention, and a greater portion of reflection, and the true spirit of philosophy than is possessed, or exercised by ordinary travellers to judge with just discrimination of men and things in foreign countries. Countries are described from a single spot, manners from a single action, and men from the first man that is seen on a foreign shore, and him, perhaps, only half seen and at a distance. Hence America has been presented by different travellers as the most fertile or the most barren region on the globe. Navigators to Africa who have visited only the shores of the Gambia or the Senegal speak of the spreading forests, and the luxuriant herbage of the arid continent. Surprize occasioned by an uncommon complexion, or composition of features, or a stature a little above or below the ordinary standard, has distorted, and increased or diminished the size of the people of different nations beyond all the proportions of nature. Such judgments are similar to those which a Chinese sailor who had accidentally been thrown on Cape May, or Cape Hatteras, would form of the United States ; or would form or Great-Britain or of France who had seen only the suburbs of Dover, or of Calais. Besides the limited sphere of observation of such a traveller, he would naturally see every thing with astonishment, or with disgust, which would exaggerate or distort his representation. He would see each action, that might occur to his observation, by itself, without knowing its connexions; or he would give it in his imagination those connexions which it would have in his own country. A similar error led Capt. Cook, in his first voyage to form an unfavorable opinion of the modesty and chas-
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ed. And the same fate should have attended those of the Ladrone islands to whom Buffon, after Gemelli Carreri has been pleased to give an imaginary existence. Tavernier's tales of the smooth and hairless

[[footnote]] 
tity of the women of Otaheité, which his after experience taught him to correct. Many such false judgments are to be found in almost every writer of voyages or travels. The American savages have often been represented by European writers as frigid towards the sex because they seldom avail themselves of the opportunities almost constantly offered by their state of society, to violate the chastity of their females. And, on the other hand, they are sometimes represented as licentious because they are seen to lie promiscuously in the same wigwam, or round the same fire.--Both judgments are false ; and result from prepossessions formed in society. Simplicity or rather rudeness of manners, and the hardships of their state, more than constitution, or than climate, create that appearance of indifference, on the one hand, which esteemed an evidence of frigidity ; and give occasion, on the other, to that promiscuous intercourse which is supposed to be united with criminal indulgence. Luxury, restraints, and the manifold arts employed for the purpose, in polished society, contribute to inflame desire, which is allayed by the coarse manners, and the hard fare of savage life, wherein no studied excitements are employed to awaken the passions. And in the midst of this apparently unrestrained freedoms, infinitely fewer violations of female honor and safety take place, than are found under the restraints and excitements of out civilized manners. On a like foundation cowardice has been imputed to the aboriginal natives of America, because they prosecute their wars by stratagem,--insensibility because they suffer torture with a patience not to be parallelled in any other country,--and thievishness,
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