36
A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
are perfectly naked till the age of puberty. Despotic governors, bigotted priests, and indolence on the part of the court of Lisbon, will always keep these people in a wretched situation, beneath that of any community of negroes in Africa, and prevent them from increasing their numbers, which are the real wealth of a nation. It is natural for people whose solids are relaxed in a fervid climate, to incline to sloth and laziness; but they are confirmed in these vices, and must become indifferent to improvement, when they know the attempt would only make their situation more irksome. With a kind of gloomy insensibility they give themselves up to beggary, the only state which can protect them from the greedy clutches of tyrannical masters; and they shun every labour, which must encrease the treasures of others without benefit to themselves; and which only breaks in upon those hours of rest, that are now the solace of their precarious condition. Such clouded prospects, that never admit a gleam of happiness, cannot be incitements to marriage, and the difficulty of supporting a wretched existence, is a sufficient reason to decline the cares annexed to the relation of parents. Let us add to this, that the dry soil, whose fertility depends on the stated return of annual rains, is parched up whenever a drought takes place; all vegetation is then destroyed, and an inevitable famine succeeds. It may be reasonably supposed, that the
experience
