Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1768 edition. Excerpt: ... went to a brook, and taking off my shirt, which might be said to be alive with '. vermin, set myself about to wash it; which having done as well as I could, and hung on a bush to dry, I heard a bustle about the wigwams; and soon perceived that the women were prepar ing to depart, having stripped their wigwams of their bark covering, and carried it into their canoes. Putting on, therefore, my shirt just as it was, I hastened to join them, having a great desire of being present at one of their fishing parties. It was my lot to be put into the canoe with my two patronesses, and some others who assisted in rowing: we were in all four canoes. After rowing some time, they gained such an offing as they required, where the water here was about eight or ten fathom deep, and there lay upon their oars. And now the youngest of the two women, taking a basket in her mouih, jumped overboard, and div ing to the bottom, continued under water an amazing time: when she had fil r led the basket with sea-eggs, she came up to the boat-side; and delivering it so filled to the other women in the boat, they took out the contents, and returned, it to her. The diver then, after haying taken a short time to breathe, went down and up again With the same success; and so several times for the space of half an hour. It seems as if Providence had endued this people with a kind of amphibious nature, as the sea is the only source from whence almost all their subsistence is derived. This element too, being here very boisterous, and falling with a most heavy surf upon a rugged coast, very little, except some seal, is to be got any where but in the quiet bosom of the deep. What occasions this reflexion is the early propensity I had so frequently observed in the children of these...