LETTER CXX. Usbek to the Same.

COUNTRIES inhabited by savages are usually thinly peopled, from the aversion they almost always have to labour and the cultivation of lands. This unhappy aversion is so strong, that when they would make an imprecation against one of their enemies, they wish nothing more than that he may be obliged to manure a field; thinking no exercise noble and worthy of them, except hunting and fishing. But as there are often years in which hunting and fishing afford very little, they are desolated by frequent famines: besides that there is not any country where game and fish is so plentiful, as to afford subsistence to a numerous people, because animals always fly from places too much inhabited. Besides the hords of the savages, with two or three hundred inhabitants in each, separated from one another, and having interests as different as those of two empires, can never support themselves; because they have not the resources of great states, whose parts all unite and mutually assist each other. There is another custom among the savages, not less prejudicial than the first; the cruel custom among the women of procuring abortions, that their bigness may not render them disagreeable to their husbands. There are terrible laws here against this crime; they carry them even to excess. Any woman who does not declare her pregnancy to a magistrate, is punished with death if her fruit is lost: shame and modesty, nay accidents themselves, do not excuse them.

Paris, the 9th of the moon Rhamazan,
1718.