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328

But, "men cannot sleep on the wet ground without hazard of some mortal disease."--By men I presume his lordship means Europeans, because the savages of America, sleep on the naked earth without hazard, in every change of weather, or of season.  Whether he admits the American savage into the rank of men or not, he concludes, from this circumstance, that they are of a different species from the civilized and polished people of Europe.  If he had visited the forests of the new world, he would have found in this, as well as in many other instances, how little he was acquainted with human nature beyond the sphere of his own country.  He would have seen this argument, on which he rests with so much confidence, entirely overturned. He would have seen Europeans, or the descendants of Europeans, without any mixture of indian blood, become, by habit, as capable as savages, of using the naked earth for their bed, and of enduring all the changes of an inclement sky. The Anglo-Americans, on the frontiers of the United States, who acquire their subsistence chiefly by hunting, enter, with facility, into all the customs of the neighbourhing savages, and endure with equal hardiness the want of every convenience of polished society.

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And not only the hunters, who have long been accustomed to those habits of living, are able to lodge without injury, on the damp earth, but the large companies of men, women, and children, who are continually removing from the interior parts of the United States to the western countries for the sake of occupying new lands, encamp every night in the open air. They sleep on the bare ground with, perhaps, only a few dried leaves beneath them; and frequently exposed to heavy showers of rain or snow. Kindling a large fire in the center of their encampment, they sleep round it, extending their feet towards the pile. And, while the feet are kept warm, as they have often informed me, they seldom suffer any serious injury to their health from the coldness of the earth or the vapors of the atmosphere.
"But, the argument which I chiefly rely on," continues his lordship, "is, that, were all men of one species, there never could have existed, without a miracle, different kinds, such as exist at present. Giving allowance for every supposable variation of climate, or of other causes, what can follow but endless varieties among individuals, as among tulips in a garden? Instead of which we find men of dif